Ambience: Evaporated Summer
by Hieda no Akyuu
Summary: Dedicated to Admiral F. R. Kevinson, to whom I have pledged my undying love.
1. 五月二十九日（木）

**五月二十九日（木）**

It has been four weeks since that day.

A lot has happened since then...things that will hurt me to write. It hurts me so much just thinking about what my life was like just a month earlier, and how much different it's become now. It's so different that it's painful. It's not anything in particular about my new life that pains me, although...there are a few complaints that I do have...but those aside, my new life is treating me well.

But it's just not the same without Teitoku...that is, Admiral Kevinson, the man who was in charge of us a month ago, up until the Abyssal surprise attack on our base in Okinawa.

Headquarters decided to do away with our naval base down at Okinawa. The reasons were twofold: first, this would completely fulfill the calls for the removal of all military bases on the island, as the local population had bad experiences with the American bases that were there before us and took this chance to demand the removal of our base too after the attack; and second, this would fool the Abyssals into thinking that Japan's naval defenses were weakened and needed time to recuperate, or at least that was the theory behind it, when in fact we had all of our military forces on high alert for any more Abyssal attacks on the mainland, or so I heard.

We were ordered to assist in the demolishing of our own naval base, and most of us who had been there for more than just a couple of weeks cried when we heard our orders. I remember all of us "starter ship girls" as Teitoku referred to us in his journal, crying when we heard it. We didn't want to destroy the place we called home, even if our time was short. All the memories I had with everyone - with my fellow destroyers, my fellow comrades and ship girls and friends, and especially with Teitoku - I'd promised him that if he ever recovered from his terrible wounds, in my final words in his last journal book, I would take him back to that same pier where we sat with Shigure-onee-san watching the nighttime moonlit sky, just the two of us. But now...I don't think that's possible anymore. Most of us of the fleet stationed at Okinawa didn't even stay around long enough to watch the demolishing process complete, because we were transferred elsewhere to help the rest of the Moebius Four Platoon mobilize.

Because Inazuma-chan, Sazanami-chan, Murakumo-chan, Fubuki-chan, and I were the most battle-proven and experienced ship girls of the entire Platoon, in the eyes of our superiors in the Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force and Headquarters in Tokyo, we were the most valuable ship girls they could get their hands on. Therefore, they decided that in order to mobilize the rest of the Platoon stationed throughout other naval bases in Japan, they would divide us and send each of us to a naval base of our own - in other words, they assigned us to a specific naval base where other ship girls like us of the Platoon were stationed in order to assist the commander of each naval base train those ship girls for battle, and possibly for eventual war against the Abyssals. It is clear that our government will not overlook the attack on our naval base in Okinawa and will take the first opportunity it sees to crush the Abyssals with no mercy.

I remember the last day I spent at Okinawa. I spent my last hour sitting on the couch that I once sat on with Teitoku. As I sat there, I couldn't help but play back all of the memories that I'd accumulated with him, especially those that involved the two of us on that couch together...just the two of us. I couldn't stop myself from crying again, and Shigure-onee-san walked in on me crying, so I couldn't hide it. But she sat with me and hugged me and comforted me as best she could, even though I myself couldn't bear to be comforted and just wanted to do nothing but cry and feel bad for myself. It was a terrible feeling to have, and I hated every second of it...but I suppose there was no way getting around it. I knew I had to suffer, even if I was trying my hardest not to.

I was transferred to the Naval Air Facility Atsugi...or Atsugi Naval Air Station. Because the Americans had agreed to withdraw their troops from the military bases and installations from Japan, we filled the vacuum they left in their wake with our own troops and military infrastructure. As I had learned, our country did not hesitate to seize their chance to re-militarize. It's like the pre-war decades all over again...while I did admittedly feel quite excited that all of us ship girls of the Moebius Four Platoon would now finally get to show the world once more that we had returned to serve our country once more as valiantly as we had done in the previous war, I also felt quite anxious...that this time would go no better than the last. And besides, we have a new enemy to fight. The Americans are no longer our enemy - our former Admiral himself was an American, no less.

At least, that's what I would like to tell myself. But I know things are quickly getting worse and worse.

My new Admiral here at Atsugi Naval Air Station, Rear Admiral Takahashi Ryuutaro-san, is a decent man, but he is a proper Japanese salaryman. He treats his work very seriously and works very hard, but he takes on time to interact with the ship girls who have been assigned to him. Therefore, to me and the other girls here at Atsugi Naval Air Station, he seems very cold and inhuman. We can't blame him, though, because he is also very dedicated to his family. As soon as his work is finished for the day, he immediately departs from base to stay with his family, who I have heard has moved to the residential premises just outside the base to help his wife raise their newborn twins. In that sense, his aloofness can be forgiven. It's probably better for us, anyway - better an aloof Admiral than...well, the polar opposite.

It is because of this reason, among others, that I can't ever bring myself to call Takahashi-san "Teitoku" whenever he is not around. To me, in this life, in this form, I only have one Teitoku - and that is Admiral Kevinson. He has firmly entrenched his place in my mind as the only man whom I will always be proud to call my Teitoku. I do not mean to take away from Takahashi-san's skill and dedication to his own line of work, but...he isn't Teitoku. There can only be one Teitoku...and he is no longer here to command us.

Oh, no, I'm getting off topic now...I guess this is what happens when I write with my emotions. Now that I am sitting down and taking the time to write a diary like Teitoku did, only now do I realize writing a diary is much harder than it seems.

Anyway, Takahashi-san informed me, I being his secretary ship girl because of my elevated position, the day I arrived at Atsugi Naval Air Station the overarching situation. He told me about my new duties, how I was to train the other ship girls stationed here, how our government was looking to track down the Abyssals who attacked us at Okinawa, and lastly and most alarmingly, how political ties with the United States was worsening rapidly. Apparently, the Diet is convinced that it is due to Teitoku's inadequacy at his post at Okinawa that allowed such an attack on our base to happen in the first place, that perhaps Commander Kevinson had failed to properly execute Operation Rising Sun and allowed the enemy to slip past our defenses and deal their forces a critical blow. And because they found out that Seal Team Six, our developers, were present at the Okinawa naval base at the time of its attack, they also placed the blame on them for not being able to deter such a devastating attack from the Abyssals.

It is very unlike me to get very angry, but when I heard about this from Takahashi-san, I didn't know what to think, I was so angry. It was the first time I'd ever been angry enough to hit something. And now, whenever I think back to that moment in time when I did get so infuriated, it scares me. I didn't even know I could even get that angry. But...how else should I have reacted? My own government, the people who give me orders and are in charge of the country I love and want to protect, are calling Teitoku, the person I love, a terrible commander when in fact he was probably the best all of us could have ever gotten. Their treatment of him is so unfair, and yet I can do nothing but watch it happen.

Teitoku himself had been evacuated quickly from Okinawa back to America for his medical treatment. I was told by Big-san, our head developer, that he and his team would make sure to do everything in their power to help him make a full recovery, for he is the only American naval officer with experience in commanding a ship girl navy, something that no one else in the world has the right to say. And in case his services are needed again, Teitoku would need to make a full recovery. Big-san made it sound like Teitoku didn't even have a choice in the matter, or the choice could be made for him in spite of his own accord or the will of nature. And somehow, that irks me. But I couldn't say anything, again, because...because they're going to heal Teitoku for me, and they're the ones who will most likely make it possible for me to see Teitoku again. And I know that deep in my heart, if I must, I would be willing to do virtually anything to see him again.

I don't know where everyone else from the naval base at Okinawa got transferred to. A few of them did end up with me, like Shigure-onee-san, Kiyoshimo-chan, Goya-chan, Noshiro-san, Yamato-san, and Taihou-san. But besides them, everyone else here are ship girls whom we hadn't seen in months and have vever actually fought in live combat with. And to think that I'm in charge of training everyone...that's never really settled fully in my head, that I hold rank over everyone else, despite me only being a destroyer.

I haven't mentioned that, actually, have I? Upon my arrival here at Atsugi, I was greeted by Grand Admiral Mizushima, who congratulated me for my service so far and informed me out of nowhere that I would be the first such ship girl of my kind to receive an actual military rank and uniform. I am now Lieutenant Samidare...although the sound of me being called Lieutenant gets my heart a bit fluttery, I can't imagine myself being called that all the time. Just being called my name is much better, for my own sake. They also gave me a much more adorned Kaijou Jietai uniform, which I must wear in case I must attend any Navy-related meetings at base, and I'm actually very happy about it. I love the look of the uniform, and it's even made to keep the colors of my own beloved uniform. In fact, it really is just like my normal uniform, only with longer sleeves and made to look more like a proper navy uniform.

Ugh...I still have more I want to write, but I'm getting sleepy already. All this work...now I understand what Teitoku must have felt when he did all of his own paperwork.

Teitoku, only now do I realize just how strong you really were, and...I feel really bad for not noticing this earlier and thanking you truly for all of the hard work you put into making our base at Okinawa such a home for us all.

I love you, Teitoku.

五月雨


	2. 五月三十日（金）

**五月三十日（金）**

Today was busy as usual. Now that I'm formally a uniformed officer in the eyes of the military, not just a ship girl, Takahashi-san sure has been working me like one. I read in Teitoku's journal, how he was always doing something called "pencil-pushing", and when I looked up what that phrase meant in English, I learned that it was a colloquial way of referring to office work. English is a very interesting language...but then again, I would imagine that Teitoku had a similar time getting used to Japanese. Even to this day, I'll always be amazed by his fluency at Japanese, despite him being American. Even though Atsugi Naval Air Station is now technically a fully Japanese possession because of the Moebius Four Armament Pact, there are still a few American officers who have stayed behind because of their military engineering skill or other sort of valuable asset that the servicemen here at base still require, and while their Japanese is not bad, they still have their American accent whenever they speak. Teitoku had a little bit of an American accent when he first started out, I remember, but it quickly disappeared as we talked with him and got to know him more.

I mentioned yesterday that we have some old faces here who have been transferred with me to Atsugi. I was the first to be sent here, and then the others came after me. The JMSDF has organized our main naval base structure to be comprised of five main bases: Atsugi Naval Air Station, Kure Naval Base, Maizuru Naval Base, Hiroshima Naval Base, and Oroku Naval Air Station, and the entire Moebius Four Platoon has been divided as evenly as possible to accommodate all bases fairly with similar amounts of each ship type. Thus, here at Atsugi Naval Air Station, this is the full roster:

* * *

(DD) Samidare Kai  
(DD) Shigure Kai 2  
(DDG) Kiyoshimo (Modernized)  
(DD) Akigumo  
(DD) Asashimo  
(DD) Suzukaze  
(DD) Hamakaze  
(DD) Amatsukaze  
(DD) Hatsukaze  
(DD) Akizuki  
(DD) Fubuki  
(DD) Shirayuki  
(DD) Fumizuki  
(DD) Mikazuki

(SS) I-58  
(SS) I-8

(CL) Noshiro  
(CL) Agano  
(CL) Yuubari  
(CL) Nagara  
(CL) Natori

(BB) Yamato  
(BB) Fusou  
(BB) Yamashirou

(CVL) Hiyou  
(CVL) Chiyoda

(CVN) Taihou  
(CVN) Katsuragi

* * *

Unfortunately, I wasn't allowed to see the rosters of the other bases, despite my officer ranking. I don't know why they would keep information like that secret. It's like...I have a feeling that they are doing this so that ship sisters who have been split up from one another can't see where their own sisters have been assigned. If I think of it that way, my chest starts to ache for everyone who misses their siblings dearly. I have been fortunate enough to be assigned with several of my own loved ones, like my ship sisters Shigure-onee-san and Suzukaze-chan and Yuubari-san, with whom I've sortied in the distant past. Thankfully, most of the other girls here have at least one of their siblings with whom they can spend their time with here at base, but Katsuragi-san, who wanted to be assigned with at least Amagi-san or Unryuu-san, was not able to do so and was crushed at the fact. Only now is she beginning to steady herself somewhat, partly because Taihou-san pitied her and made friends with her, saying that she knew what it felt like not having a ship sister around.

Our daily schedule at Atsugi Naval Air Station is similar to our daily routines at Okinawa, but it is a bit more strict. Every day, we all wake up at 0700 hours and begin with base warmups, which is three laps around the airfield. And since it is roughly 3500 meters for one lap...it's basically a 10-kilo run every morning. It's nothing that we can't manage, us being ship girls and all. But if we have an especially busy day training, it can be the start of a very tiring day. And this time, here at Atsugi, the alarm system has been repurposed to double as a base-wide alarm clock, so we must wake up punctually at 0700 hours every day. While this is understandable, I sort of miss the days when I was deployed at Okinawa, where it didn't matter so much whether we woke up on time or not - not to mention the fact that we could sleep in an hour, until 0800 hours. I can't help but get the feeling that they want to train us a bit too severely, as though we must get trained right away, as soon as humanly possible.

If we even count as humans in the eyes of our superiors.

Then, after breakfast, which is from 0800 hours to 0830 hours, we train until lunch in everything land warfare-based. Firearm training, calisthenics, equipment usage, hand-to-hand and weapon melee usage - in such a context, I would have thought we were being trained to become ordinary soldiers like the rest of the Rikujou Jietai. The rest of the ship girls also wondered about this too, some of them complaining to the point where they came up to me and demanded that I ask Takahashi-san the reasoning behind all this land warfare training when we were ship girls. I guess I can understand their animosity towards this kind of morning training, since there was a lot of rivalry back in the day, during the war, between the Navy and the Army. I tried my best to tell them that these days, there shouldn't be any sort of rivalry or bad blood between the Navy and the Army, and that we shouldn't try to reopen old wounds like that, but I'm not sure if they'll listen.

Regardless, earlier today, when I finally had a chance to speak with Takahashi-san in private, I informed him of our ship girls' bout with the morning training and asked him if there was a legitimate reason that I could relay to the rest of the girls that would justify the training. Takahashi-san replied very simply that it was orders from Headquarters, and not only that, it was part of the set of orders given to them by the Prime Minister himself, who acts as the Commander-in-Chief of all Rikujou Jietai forces and thus wields some influence over the Kaijou Jietai as collateral. Takahashi-san also gave his own opinion on the matter as well, saying that he somewhat agreed with the girls' gripe about land training when they were ship girls and that they were better off training what skills they were built for, because he felt that the Diet was trying to turn the Platoon into some kind of special ops force, like a second Tokushu Sakusen Gun, our national special operations and counter-terrorism unit. While he said that given our specifications and our superhuman abilities and constitution, he had all the faith in the world that we would be able to perform any duty, whether it be as soldiers, special ops agents, or ship girls, he still felt that there were a few things astray with the reasoning behind giving us ship girls ordinary soldier training. But he wasn't one to question his authority or his orders, so he asked me to do the same and relay it to the rest of the fleet here.

After soldier training is lunch, from 1200 hours to 1300 hours. After lunch is naval combat training - and as you might imagine, I am the one in charge. It feels very odd, being the commander over the rest of my fellow ship girls. I even hold supreme command over people like Shigure-onee-san and Kiyoshimo-chan, both of whom are leagues stronger than I. I even asked Takahashi-san what the chances were of granting those two and other veterans from the Okinawa base rank and uniform, but he shot my request down with an immediate no, saying that the Kaijou Jietai didn't have the room to accommodate so many officers. Personally, I think there is something off with that, but I didn't press the issue. The fact that several of the other girls of different ship types, namely Chiyoda-san and Yamashirou-san, objected heavily to my superiority over them, saying that a mere destroyer shouldn't hold something as obscenely flagrant as rank over _battleships_ and _carriers_. I have recently felt some jealousy and animosity towards me coming from even some of my fellow destroyers, like Asashimo-chan. Perhaps obtaining a rank and officer status was never a good idea after all...

In any case, because we are stationed at Atsugi Naval Air Station, where we don't exactly have a dock to work with, Headquarters hired a local contracting company to dig out a huge pool right in the middle of the naval air station, underneath all the runways at the airfield. During the afternoon, because base priority belonged to our training as ship girls, all air traffic would halt, except for helicopter activity and other aircraft that can perform vertical takeoff and landing sequences, and for six hours from 1300 hours to 1900 hours, with a few fifteen-minute breaks in between, I must train the fleet in all the ways I could about being a highly effective combat ship girl. At first, when I first began to train the fleet like this in the beginning about two weeks ago, I was extremely nervous and nearly botched my first day as a lieutenant ship girl, but I forced myself to muster up my courage and act like Teitoku whenever he gave us his personal naval training, and eventually I managed to get acclimated to it...somehow. Takahashi-san, who has observed my training and leadership, said that while my strictness as an officer and overall atmosphere of a hardline superior needed some major improvements, my teaching seemed excellent. He told me that I needed to drop my rather meek and polite personality in order to compel the girls who weren't so inclined to accept my leadership to do what I asked them.

Honestly, I...don't ever feel like I could do that. I can't ever bring myself to yell at another one of my fellow ship girls. That's not something I want to ever do, forced to or not. I'd feel really bad...especially when the person I yell at, if I ever do, takes it the wrong way and hates me forever. I don't want anyone to hate me; I'm just trying to do my best as a new lieutenant. Sometimes, there are days when I ask myself if I'm really cut out to be an officer, whether or not I'm of the caliber to be a good lieutenant. So far, my answer is leaning more towards no than yes.

This reminds me of one of the sections that Teitoku wrote in his journal, his feelings about being an officer. I know he mentioned how he felt that the role of an officer was complicated...that one of the duties of an officer was to know when to send his or her men and women out to their deaths. This, I surely cannot bear to do. I don't want there to be a day when this must be one of the duties I must perform. I don't want to send any of my fellow ship girls to their deaths.

I guess writing something like this...surely I'm not worthy of holding the title of an officer. I feel like crying just thinking about what it must mean to be an officer. Teitoku, how on Earth did you serve your years as an officer knowing what the responsibilities were to be one? I don't understand...or rather, my heart doesn't want to understand what it must feel like. It's too painful to dwell on...

After naval combat training is dinner, from 1900 hours to 2000 hours, and then we thankfully have the rest of the evening off. That just about rounds up the daily schedule for us, but because I am a lieutenant, part of my officer responsibilities is to assist the Rear Admiral with his office duties. I remember the parts in Teitoku's journal about he dreaded office work in the past because there were hardly any reliable secretaries or such in the past, so I was determined not to become one of them and prepared myself mentally to tackle any amount of paperwork that I needed to have processed. Thankfully, Takahashi-san is a dutiful Admiral, and usually all I need to process and look over are reports that he's already written out, checking them for errors and stamping them, sealing them, and giving them to the night courier for mailing if need be. But I can never predict how much office work needs to get done every night - some nights, there are only a few letters and documents that require looking over, and other nights I spend my entire evening in the Admiral's office and barely get enough sleep to wake up on time the next morning.

Ooyodo-san, you really are amazing. No wonder Teitoku had you as his secretary ship girl ever since you arrived at Okinawa.

But today, when I was looking over the reports for tonight, one of them was a fleet status update from Headquarters, informing Takahashi-san and the other newly assigned Admirals to head the Moebius Four Platoon that the ship girls who had been killed in action during the Abyssal raid on the base at Okinawa have been repaired by Seal Team Six, our developers, and are due to arrive in their respective bases within forty-eight hours of the report's delivery. While this doesn't really affect us in any way, I'm still very glad to hear that our casualties have since been repaired. It still breaks my heart recalling the day of the ambush, when the carriers found out that Houshou was amongst the four of us who had been killed. For their sake, I wish them the best.

Please watch over me, Teitoku. I don't know how else I will serve my duty here as a new lieutenant of the Kaijou Jietai.

I love you, Teitoku.

五月雨


	3. 五月三十一日（土）

**五月三十一日（土）**

Ooooohh...today was a long day at the office. I will be keeping this journal entry shorter than the others, because it is already 0200 hours and I really must get some sleep if I want to even hope to wake up properly tomorrow. It really is so difficult to keep a journal, yet every time I think this, I can't help but remember how little Teitoku himself ever complained about writing his own journal. I must learn from him and refrain from complaining when I clearly do not have any reason to.

Today was a rather ordinary day, nothing too special. I'm starting to become good friends with the office ladies who work in the administrative and logistics offices next to Takahashi-san's - since I have been working in Takahashi-san's office for the past two weeks and the ladies have to come into his office where I work to use the fax machine, we've begun to talk a lot. Unfortunately, I'm under orders not to reveal my true identity to them, since they are not affiliated with the Platoon whatsoever, so they think that I am the daughter of one of the high-ranking officers in command of Atsugi Naval Air Station working for her father whilst he manages over military duties elsewhere throughout the country. We talk about all kinds of things, but recently we've been into all sorts of food talk. One of the ladies, Anna-san, has been cooking a lot recently because she has extended family over at her house for some kind of special occasion, and she has been asking for our opinions on what kinds of food she should make for the next day during our coffee breaks. The other office lady, Yoshiko-san, suggested that she try to make some Western dishes to diversify a little, citing her own recent experience with cooking Western-style dishes for her own family, especially chowder, so we spent our whole coffee break talking about trying to make chowder. Clam chowder is apparently very popular in the West, but there are many kinds of chowder and many ways to make it. All of it sounded so interesting.

But I can't help but wonder...before I met Teitoku, I wasn't too interested in talking about food. I mean, I...I wanted to try cooking, yes, but I was fine with only learning how to make Japanese-style dishes and not knowing much more beyond that. So is the fact that now I feel a bit of a desire to seriously learn how to become a good cook because of my own wishful thinking that maybe one day, I would someday cook for Teitoku? That would imply that I'd be married to him, doesn't it?

I'm getting ahead of myself. There's...probably not much of a chance that we'd ever marry, I suppose...

But I will strive to learn how to cook anyway. If not for Teitoku, at least for my friends and comrades. Mess hall meals can become rather boring to eat - and especially for us ship girls who have transferred here from Okinawa, we have definitely been spoiled by Mamiya-san's, Irako-san's, and Houshou-san's cooking. Teitoku's cooking, though, was the most delicious of all...in my personal opinion, though. I seemed to be the only one who thought that.

I spent some time with Suzukaze today, too. I missed Suzukaze dearly when I transferred to Okinawa, but as I gradually fell deeper and deeper in love with Teitoku, my heartache to see Suzukaze again disappeared. Only until I saw her face again here at Atsugi Naval Air Station did it hit me, just how much I missed my ship sister, and I cried into her arms our first night together. Suzukaze hadn't changed at all during the four months that I was away - she was a secretary ship girl to a rather irresponsible naval officer who was more interested in groping her armpits than anything else. She told me all kinds of hilarious stories between her and that particular naval officer, plenty of awkward moments when Suzukaze was working in his office just to find him underneath her desk contemplating whether her armpits or the backs of her knees were better to feel up.

Then, she asked me about my own Admiral, Teitoku. She didn't really like her own, for obvious reasons, and so she wanted to know what I thought about mine, the foreigner commander from America who was rumored to be a double agent for the Americans and trying to sabotage the Platoon. I told Suzukaze sternly to forget everything our superiors had told her about Teitoku, because most likely, whatever they told her were lies. I told her how much of a good person Teitoku truly was. I told her that if possible, I would've liked her to serve with me at Okinawa so that she would come to understand just how much of a good admiral he really was.

Suzukaze asked me why I was lionizing him so much. In her words, she was wondering why I was "acting like I had a thing for him". I told Suzukaze simply that I was speaking very highly of Teitoku because of that reason. I came to appreciate him and his work and dedication far more than just as a ship girl or even soldier. I disclosed to Suzukaze my love for that particular man whom I call "Teitoku". Suzukaze said that she understood where I was coming from, and she went on to tell me that she'd noticed that whenever I addressed Takahashi-san as "Teitoku", I never looked like I was happy saying it. As in, my facial expression was always so noticeably overcast that Suzukaze couldn't help but notice it any time she saw me with Takahashi-san.

Suzukaze gave me a hug and a kiss on my cheek. She said that she didn't care if she was technically the younger one between us, she would still do her best to make me not feel so lonely. She explained to me that the reason why the naval officer she had to work under always tried going around touching her was because he'd recently broken up with his own fiance and admitted to Suzukaze that he wasn't trying to be all malicious and creepy, just that he wanted some kind of outlet to distract him from what was going on in his personal life. She told me that she was starting to feel worried for me, too, that I might end up the same way, that I may be hurting on the inside because of what's happened to him. By that point, I felt like there was no point in keeping it a secret from my own ship sister. I told Suzukaze that yes, indeed, my heart was aching, both because of what's happening to him and because I can no longer see him every day like I was once able to back during my days at Okinawa just barely a month ago.

So I spent nearly an hour after dinner in my small, plain dorm hugging Suzukaze like my life depended on it. I didn't cry, since I'd cried enough already. But I wanted to. I wanted to cry...but I guess I just couldn't bring myself to do so beyond what I'd already done during my last days at Okinawa.

Now, looking in hindsight, I remember the day that Teitoku's parents visited the base at Okinawa. It's clear that Teitoku despises his parents, looking at his thoughts regarding them in his journals. I don't believe he has any other siblings beside himself, either. So now, I can feel my heart aching even more when I think about how fortunate I must be to have such supportive sisters like Shigure-onee-san and Suzukaze by my side, ready to comfort me whenever I am feeling down, while Teitoku probably never could go to anyone to talk out his feelings and whatnot. Even during our brief time together as lovers, I don't quite get the feeling that he wanted to act like how I was with Suzukaze earlier today with me or anyone else at base - but perhaps that is more due to his unwillingness to get too close and personal with us and make relationships that may be better off not being made, such as ours.

But even if he believes that our relationship was one that should never have been made, I will keep this relationship alive as long as my life remains. Everyone always says how they are so prepared to face whatever challenges, problems, and hardships that come their way, and how enthusiastic they are about overcoming them. I know that in reality, not everyone upholds these same words that they themselves speak. I am determined not to become one of them, the ones who do whatever is easiest. I am being tested, and I will not fall.

I love you, Teitoku.

五月雨


	4. 六月一日（日）

**六月一日（日）**

The summer rains are starting to come in. Seeing this rain, my ship sisters and I have been quite happy.

If only Teitoku was here to enjoy the rainy season with us...it would be the happiest time of my life. But...but that isn't the case, unfortunately.

I will not lie to myself here; my biggest desire was to spend the rainy season with Teitoku. Perhaps this is only my personal fantasies speaking for me, but I really wanted to sit with Teitoku in his office on the couch, looking out the window behind his desk to watch the rain fall. It would have been better in Okinawa, too, for it would been raining much more down there than here in Tokyo.

But since we are in the midst of our training, the rain did not do much to halt the progress of our training. Some of us, like me and my ship sisters, are perfectly okay working in the rain - Suzukaze even said that she prefers it, as opposed to running our morning runs in the growing summer heat. Others are less enthusiastic about the rain, while others absolutely detest it. I suppose it is really up to personal preference.

Shigure-onee-san talked with me about the possibility of a connection between our names and our affinity for the rain while we were practicing firearm training in the morning. She asked me if I agreed with her in thinking that perhaps our affinity for the rain was because of our names, that our developers from Seal Team Six took into account the meaning of our names and made it a part of our personalities. I replied by saying that she was probably right, because it would be rather odd if our names referred to something having to do with rainy weather but we ourselves ended up not liking the rain. But when I asked Shigure-onee-san why she thought about something like that, she said that she couldn't help but think that maybe our affinity for the rain wasn't "natural". In other words, she said that maybe our names placed an artificial attribute about us that, should we have been born as normal humans, we might have not had developed on our own. She said that if she thought of it in this way, she didn't really feel so comfortable about having a part of her personality being "fake" or "fabricated". She could manage with having her body genetically modified to be stronger than that of normal human bodies and, to a certain extent, having powers that gave her a persona-altering edge in a battle, because such powers were meant to help her gain an advantage in a fight. But Shigure-onee-san admitted to me that although she didn't blame our developers from Seal Team Six for designing us in this way, she didn't want to feel like a part of herself as a person was determined for her.

I understand where she is coming from with this. Sometimes, before I was deployed to Okinawa and was stationed in Tokyo for a while with everyone else, I spent many a night pondering what being a "normal" human must feel like. Being born from a factory or a test tube instead of from the womb of a mother, being "constructed" in a laboratory instead of being nurtured and cared for in the body of a mother - if I think of my own life in this way, certainly I feel an eerie sense of artificiality that clashes with my desire to feel and behave like a normal human being as much as I can. And my problem is that I still do, a little bit, even now. I think that everyone in the Platoon can agree with this, that everyone has a bit of a weird feeling in the back of her head that tells her that she is not a real human being. And it's not as though that is not true - we are, scientifically speaking, not true human beings, not in any conventional sense.

But I told Shigure-onee-san that even if we consciously felt like parts of us, whether physical or psychological, were indeed predetermined, that didn't mean we should hate it. It is not as though we can change facts about us that cannot be changed, like our origins or the powers that we wield. So those things weren't as important as what we ourselves decided to do with the powers that have been given to us. I read in one of Teitoku's journal entries about this "American mentality", that one's actions are more important than one's facts, because facts by themselves mean nothing, while actions can produce facts. I told Shigure-onee-san that maybe this was our problem, that we tend to dwell on what is concrete and cannot be changed and pine for them to be changed, when the answer to coming to terms with them is as simple as making sure that our facts help us take the actions we want to take.

In addition, I mentioned to Shigure-onee-san how I felt more and more like a normal human teenage girl once I got to know Teitoku more and more. He chose to take care of us like a father takes care of his children - well, as I say that, it sounds a bit weird to me because, well, I've...I'm in love with him and all. But never mind that, I admitted to Shigure-onee-san that being with Teitoku helped me forget that I was a ship girl. He made me feel like a normal girl, and that's why I love him - one of the reasons, anyway.

Shigure-onee-san agreed with me, saying that she couldn't have put it any better. She praised me and told me that she was truly grateful for having such a sweet sister like me whom she could come to and talk with about more complicated things like this.

When she said those things to me, I couldn't hide my happiness. I remember the first days when Yuudachi-onee-san and Shigure-onee-san arrived at our base in Okinawa, I was afraid to talk to them because of the kind of powers they had. Rumor had it that before our transfer to Okinawa, even before Teitoku arrived there before us, the naval officer who had been in charge of Shigure-onee-san and Yuudachi-onee-san got sent to the hospital because he'd tried doing something to those two, and that wasn't how I had imagined my ship sisters to be. In my head, I pictured them as gentle, outgoing girls with whom I could make friends and spend lots of time with enjoying each other's company and doing all sorts of things with them that normal teenage girls that we'd resemble would do, but after what I'd heard of them, I was hesitant. But eventually I managed to overcome that barrier, and we really did open up to each other like I'd hoped. And since then, we'd come a long way in such a short amount of time.

It's come to the point where now, I truly love Shigure-onee-san as my sister, not just my ship sister. We are comrades, sisters-at-arms, friends, but above all, siblings. I'm eternally grateful that in the midst of the loss of Teitoku, I still have Shigure-onee-san to be there to show me lots of love and kindness to heal my aching heart.

Oh, I should mention that Shigure-onee-san's firearm of choice is still the Beowulf rifle given to her by Teitoku and our developers. She has stated to our trainers at the firing range that she will use no other weapon.

Unfortunately, I didn't expect this to have unintended consequences in the form of our other ship sister, Suzukaze. Suzukaze had seen me with Shigure-onee-san and saw how close we were, talking and laughing together, so later at dinner tonight she pulled me aside to another table different than the one we usually sit at and asked me since when I got so chummy with Shigure-onee-san. Suzukaze asked me if I'd forgotten how dangerous she and Yuudachi-onee-san had gotten - it seems that the incident from five months ago is still fresh on her mind, how Shigure-onee-san and Yuudachi-onee-san sent that poor officer to the hospital. I tried to convince Suzukaze otherwise, that our time together at Okinawa changed the both of them for the better and that they were no longer prone to fits of violence as they were alleged to do from before. I cited Shigure's different appearance as my proof, explaining to Suzukaze that Seal Team Six, our developers, put her and Yuudachi-onee-san through a special kind of remodeling surgery that fixed their problems and made them super strong. I urged Suzukaze to come with me to have a chat with Shigure-onee-san one time, because even though we share the same dorm room, Suzukaze refuses to have anything to do with her. Shigure-onee-san herself is painfully aware of this and seems to respect Suzukaze's avoidance of her - perhaps she is well aware of the social damage her act of violence against her former officer has done.

But Suzukaze refused. Instead, she urged _me_ to dissociate myself with Shigure-onee-san, but I, too, refused that as well. I asked Suzukaze if she was simply jealous of the fact that I was getting along so well with Shigure-onee-san and not as much with her. Please keep in mind that Suzukaze and I were very inseparable before my transfer to Okinawa, for we did everything together, almost as though we were twin sisters. Several officers, in fact, mistook us for twins, for our physical features and our heights are very similar. So I thought that maybe Suzukaze just wanted us to go back to the days when it was just the two of us.

Suzukaze did admit that part of it was that she felt like she was being left out and wanted me to pay more attention to her, because she doesn't have anyone else she can call a friend. She doesn't usually talk to anyone else, and because of her aggressive and sometimes brash personality that gives off the air of arrogance, she tends to alienate our fellow ship girls here at Atsugi Naval Air Station. Most notably, she and Asashimo-chan always get into verbal arguments whenever they get the chance because their similar personalities always clash. But she said that she was just trying to look out for me. She couldn't trust Shigure-onee-san, and she didn't want me to get hurt when Shigure-onee-san happens to go berserk like the last time she did.

But even still, I told Suzukaze that I would not abandon Shigure-onee-san just for the sake of restoring our own sistership that we once had. In fact, I suggested, why couldn't I have both of them as my friends and sisters, and even better, why couldn't we all be friends and sisters with each other like we were meant to be? I begged Suzukaze to give Shigure-onee-san a chance, to join us in our daily activities and see for herself how much Shigure-onee-san has changed.

Suzukaze refused me yet again. "No, you're the one who's changed, Samidare," Suzukaze said. She brought up the previous night, citing how she comforted me when I was feeling down. She said that Shigure-onee-san would never be able to make me feel better the way Suzukaze could.

I tried to tell her that she was wrong. But...if I did, Suzukaze would think that I'm trying to say that Shigure-onee-san is somehow a better sister than Suzukaze herself is, and she might be hurt by that. So I said nothing. The only thing I think I can do now is to go talk to Shigure-onee-san herself and explain the situation with her and ask her if she wouldn't try to speak to Suzukaze herself, for Suzukaze, being the youngest among us, would be obligated to listen to Shigure-onee-san if Shigure-onee-san imposed her position as the oldest sister of the Shiratsuyu-Class onto her. But even that is risky, and it might alienate Suzukaze from us forever.

I just want the three of us to be family, along with the rest of the girls here at Atsugi.

I love you, Teitoku.

五月雨


	5. 六月二日（月）

**六月二日（月）**

Every Monday and every Thursday, we are scheduled to be flown out to the Yokosuka Naval Yards for extended fleet training. Normally we depart after morning warm-ups and breakfast, but today, our departure was delayed by about an hour by the late arrival of a new destroyer.

Kawakaze has joined our fleet here at Atsugi Naval Air Station.

I was so surprised by this - Takahashi-san announced that our departure for our extended training at the Yokosuka Naval Yards would be delayed at breakfast because of a late arrival, so that got our fleet excited and wondering who our new transfer ship girl would be. Never would I have expected it to be Kawakaze...

I don't quite understand why at the time Takahashi-san didn't announce who it was going to be when he informed us of the situation at breakfast. He does not seem to be the type of person who gets thrilled by the excitement and speculation of everyone else, so why was Kawakaze's identity kept secret for a few hours before she arrived? I can't say I quite understand. Perhaps Headquarters wanted to keep her transfer here a secret? But for what reason?

But more importantly...

When Shigure-onee-san caught glimpse of Kawakaze when she finally did arrive to join us to fly to the Yokosuka Naval Yards for our extended training, she couldn't look her in the eye. When Suzukaze and I went up to her to welcome her and give her a hug to finally welcome her into the fleet, Shigure-onee-san did not join us. When Kawakaze asked us if any of our other sisters were also here at Atsugi Naval Air Station with us, we mentioned Shigure-onee-san, but I'd seen her reaction to Kawakaze already and tried to tell Kawakaze that now wasn't the best time to see Shigure-onee-san, but Kawakaze didn't listen to me. She looked like she knew exactly why Shigure-onee-san was behaving the way she did - in fact, we all know; it is no secret. So Kawakaze sought Shigure-onee-san out, or at least she tried to, but when she did find Shigure-onee-san, Shigure-onee-san asked her to leave her alone. Kawakaze didn't have a chance to press the issue, I don't think, for we had to depart immediately for the naval yards for our training. And all throughout our training, too, Shigure-onee-san didn't want to have anything to do with Kawakaze, avoiding her as much as possible.

Shigure-onee-san's behavior was quite explicit, so a lot of our fellow destroyer friends noticed what was going on. Because we ship girls were constructed with full knowledge of our own histories from the Second World War, they all knew the reasons for why Shigure-onee-san wanted to avoid Kawakaze, so out of respect, they, too, left Shigure-onee-san to her own devices for today.

ベラ湾夜戦 (Berawan Yasen), or the Battle of Vella Gulf in English, August 7, 1943. Shigure-onee-san was tasked with transporting troops and supplies to reinforce our position at Kolombangara Island in the Solomon Islands with Hagikaze-chan, Arashi-chan, and Kawakaze. They were ambushed by a squadron of six American destroyers who had learned well from their previous losses in the war shortly before then and ambushed Shigure-onee-san's fleet with their advanced radar and opening torpedo salvo. Shigure-onee-san's fleet had no chance to retaliate because our radar was nowhere near as developed and couldn't pinpoint the American destroyers' locations when the enemy used the mountains nearby to cover their positions in the night, and Hagikaze-chan, Arashi-chan, and Kawakaze were disabled and sunk to enemy gunfire. Only Shigure-onee-san managed to escape, but only because the torpedo that struck her in the rudder ended up being a dud and did not explode and disable her like her fleetmates had been.

Perhaps if this was the only such incident of Shigure being extremely lucky and being able to escape potential sinking during the war, Shigure-onee-san may not feel anywhere near as bad as she does now. By itself, this terrible memory may haunt Shigure-onee-san, but I truly believe that Shigure-onee-san would find it in herself to join us in welcoming Kawakaze into our fleet. But Shigure-onee-san has terrible survivor's guilt - she served throughout the entire war without sinking until nearly the very end. The only thing that could possibly have made Shigure-onee-san's survivor's guilt even worse was if she had actually managed to survive the war...only to be broken apart and sold for scrap, or captured as spoils of war to our enemies.

If I know Shigure-onee-san as I should as her ship sister, I believe that Shigure-onee-san is avoiding Kawakaze not because of any animosity or disappointment towards Kawakaze but instead out of shame that she had to leave every one of her fleetmates behind at Vella Gulf. And with her survivor's guilt exacerbating this deep sense of guilt, Shigure-onee-san views Kawakaze as the very embodiment of her actions, even though there was nothing else she could have done. But Shigure-onee-san is the type of girl to never forgive herself for what she's done, even if there was nothing else she could do, and she deliberately pitches herself into a quagmire of guilt cycles in which she roams a world full of regretful thoughts and near-suicidal wishes of alternate happenings. I kind of wish I never wrote these kinds of things about my own sister, but Teitoku has taught me that being honest with myself is the most important thing I can do. And I've determined that truth, no matter how harsh, must be spoken. Shigure-onee-san cannot overcome what she sees in herself through Kawakaze by herself. And because Teitoku is not here to comfort her and help her overcome her pain and torture, this task is now the responsibility of her ship sisters to bear.

Kawakaze was assigned to share the same room as Suzukaze, which explains why Suzukaze was dorming by herself all this time. After dinner, I spent some time with Suzukaze and Kawakaze in their dorm room, catching up with our newest destroyer arrival. Kawakaze's unexpected arrival turned out to be a kind of a double-edged sword: on one hand, the argument that I had with Suzukaze regarding Shigure-onee-san that put us in a rather precarious relationship was quickly forgotten for the sake of celebrating Kawakaze's new companionship here at Atsugi, and the three of us spent the nighttime hours after dinner talking and laughing together, which I'm very glad we were able to do. However, this being said, I doubt that Suzukaze is one to forget something like that so easily just because a new ship sister has arrived. And on the other hand, Kawakaze, whether she has intended to do this or not with her arrival, has put Shigure-onee-san in a very volatile state. Shigure-onee-san is almost at pre-Kai-2 levels of psychological disturbance, it is that bad. This means that I cannot consult her about my dispute with Suzukaze anytime soon, thereby greatly increasing the chance that the fallout between me and Suzukaze will take root once more and spread us even further apart.

But right now, our most pressing issue is how to make Shigure-onee-san calm down. Kawakaze lamented Shigure-onee-san's avoidance of her, saying that she just wanted to come say hi to her older ship sister and hope that Shigure-onee-san would at least give her a hug back. She wanted to respect Shigure-onee-san's own feelings about the battle, but she didn't want her to suffer on her own like that. It wasn't like Kawakaze was bitter at Shigure-onee-san or anything just because of the outcome of Vella Gulf; she understands that it just so happened that she was sunk and Shigure-onee-san was able to escape. I didn't ask her this directly, but I would imagine that Kawakaze herself understands that Shigure-onee-san knows about this, the fact that Kawakaze does not in fact feel any bitterness or anger towards her.

All Kawakaze wants to do is give Shigure-onee-san a hug and tell her that she's glad to be able to meet her again in this life. That's all. The only thing that is stopping this from happening is Shigure-onee-san herself - more specifically, her unwillingness to allow herself to feel the happiness that she feels she does not deserve simply because of the events that have transpired during the war.

Happiness is a strange thing, isn't it, Teitoku? It can be so simple to attain, yet at the same time, so hard to grasp and embrace. I suppose that for us ship girls, happiness is not something that we are used to having...or, even perhaps, built to feel.

But I believe in my heart that all will be well.

I love you, Teitoku.

五月雨


	6. 六月三日（火）

**六月三日（火）**

It is only the second day since Kawakaze has arrived at base, and already it feels as though she'd always been with us this whole time.

Everywhere I see Kawakaze, she is always talking and laughing with our fleetmates here at Atsugi Naval Air Station. At today's morning jog, she jogged with the Yuugumo-Class destroyers Kiyoshimo-chan, Akigumo-chan, and Asashimo-chan (even though technically Akigumo-chan isn't part of the Yuugumo-Class and instead is a part of the Kagerou-Class). During breakfast, she sat with me and Suzukaze (which then caused Shigure-onee-san to go sit with the battleships, namely Fusou-san and Yamashiro-san). During combat training, she trained with Natori-senpai and Noshiro-senpai. During our naval training, during a timed target practice exercise in which we held a miniature competition to see which squadron could eliminate the targets the fastest, Kawakaze's squadron of herself, Hachi-chan, Hamakaze-chan, and Taihou-senpai scored an amazing second place, largely due to how well Kawakaze worked with her squadmates. At dinner earlier today, I saw her eating with Fubuki-chan and Shirayuki-chan, and I overheard them talking about nice Kawakaze's red hair looked. And for me specifically, while I worked in the office on Takahashi-san's paperwork, Kawakaze even visited me to give me a cup of tea and to tell me that I was doing a great job.

Kawakaze is so friendly and so outgoing with everyone that everyone likes her. She just fits right in with everybody in a way that I can't ever hope to match. You just can't hate her, it's as though it's physically impossible to. And in light of this, I couldn't help but feel so...scared. Not in a threatened way or anything, but...but just scared in amazement, that kind of scared feeling. But why should I feel so scared about it? As ship sisters, we are supposed to naturally know what each other is like. I'm supposed to be accustomed to this, because that's how we were built. We were constructed already knowing and being aware of each other's personalities and tendencies.

Yet, now that Kawakaze is in our presence, I can't help but still feel surprised and shocked. It's...it's like what I know is merely what I _think_ I know. It's like the truth about my own younger ship sister is still true, yet at the same time false.

It's like it's so true that I almost feel like it's false.

How is that even possible?

Today's paperwork was relatively light, surprisingly enough, for a Tuesday night, so I was spared some time here in my room to think about it for the sake of this journal entry. Why was it that Kawakaze instills this kind of...fear of amazement in me? While I hesitate to call her a "perfect" ship sister, certainly there are no recognizable flaws in her persona or behavior - at least, not yet. She gets along with everyone - and by everyone, I actually mean _literally_ everyone - very well. Her combat abilities are already much more proficient than the majority of the destroyers and rivals the light cruisers' combat capacity, and at her rate, she'll be able to challenge the heavy cruisers too. And most importantly to me personally, she is very considerate. The fact that she went out of her way to bring me a cup of tea so late at night when everyone else was in the dorms...and I must point out the fact that the office in which I work my secretarial duties is on the other side of the airfield from the dorms, about six hundred meters away. Since she had come towards the end of my work, she even stayed with me to keep me company and walked back with me to the dorms. Needless to say, this alone has had a very profound impact on me, and I am indebted to say that Kawakaze has already earned a dear place in my heart.

Please, by no means am I taking her sistership for granted. I am not trying to doubt her or say that she has ulterior motives. It's just...while I am very happy and grateful to have such a wonderful and caring younger ship sister in Kawakaze, I just can't help but feel like I am forbidden to let myself become too comfortable with her.

No...I would like to make a correction. I feel as though I cannot let myself become too comfortable with _the image that Kawakaze projects_. Allow me to explain.

If I think about the personalities and behaviors of the rest of my ship sisters, the destroyers of the Shiratsuyu-Class, then I come to realize that there is no one quite like Kawakaze. Kawakaze is unique among us, the Shiratsuyu-Class, in that she offers a combination of distinct mannerisms, gregariousness, strength, and confidence with minimal flaws associated with them. Everyone else, all of the rest of her sisters, including myself, can only offer some of the same attributes, and oftentimes there are some fatal flaws strewn in. For the sake of example...

Shiratsuyu-onee-san has gregariousness and confidence. She gets along with people easily and is confident in herself and her abilities, but oftentimes she makes rivals, sometimes even enemies, out of other destroyers because of her habitual overconfidence and tendency to always want to be in first. I suppose her distinct mannerism is her love of being in first, but as already mentioned, this can get her into trouble sometimes, and Shiratsuyu-onee-san, while I am sure she is a perfectly adequate and reliable destroyer, is not really known for her strength or combat abilities.

Shigure-onee-san, as we all know, possesses a main forte of strength. Even before her Kai remodels, she was a very potent destroyer, and I could tell Teitoku really valued her strength through the training he sometimes administered to us. But her mannerisms are prone to fatalism, pessimism at times, and an unwillingness to let go of the past - _her_ past. She didn't necessarily get along with others outside of her own ship class because she's normally a quiet, reserved girl to preferred to keep to herself, and if she ever had confidence in anything she did, Shigure-onee-san certainly never showed it.

Murasame-onee-san, like Shiratsuyu-onee-san, has gregariousness and confidence...to a certain degree. Murasame is like everyone's onee-san as far as us destroyers are concerned, so she can naturally get along with any of us destroyers. But she isn't really known for her combat strength, and when the tide turns for the worse in the battle, Murasame typically loses confidence in herself and begins to worry or panic.

Yuudachi-onee-san, as we all know, is like Shigure-onee-san, with a main forte of strength, but unlike Shigure-onee-san, Yuudachi-onee-san also gets along with everyone _and_ is confident in herself. One could argue that Yuudachi-onee-san is the closest to Kawakaze in this little example that I am constructing. Her normal, everyday personality is bubbly and curiously enjoyable, and Yuudachi-onee-san can easily become everyone's friend. The only problem with Yuudachi-onee-san , in my opinion, is that because of Yuudachi-onee-san's playful personality, no one is prone to take her seriously. She is everyone's friend not because she is seen as a genuine friend, but merely as a pet-like friend, the girl everyone likes to pet, and therefore Yuudachi-onee-san's sociability is stunted. And with Yuudachi-onee-san's second Kai remodel, I feel as though her new, immense destroyer strength that easily rivals the firepower of heavy cruisers will soon become common knowledge throughout the fleet, and her ability to bond and make friends with others will be limited even more because of her ferocity in combat.

Harusame-onee-san has...none of these attributes...if I think about it. It sounds harsh, and I feel terrible for having to write this, but I must be honest. Harusame-onee-san was shy and hesitant and slow to make friends or to interact with others outside of her own ship class, she isn't known too well for her combat ability, and like Murasame-onee-san, she doesn't have anywhere near as high confidence levels as Yuudachi-onee-san or Shiratsuyu-onee-san.

Well...she _had..._

Critiquing myself, I think I only have strength as my main attribute. I can get along with others just fine, but...but I feel like the kind of image that I put out with my personality makes me seem like more of a meek character. I really want to be friends with everyone, I really do, but for some reason, I can't be. There's something about me and my personality that seems to be flawed and turning others away, and I really want to understand more about myself to grasp what it may be. I don't consider myself naturally confident, which is a bad habit from my old days as a novice destroyer four months ago, before the command of Teitoku, and the confidence that I do have now is only confidence built from hard, tangible experience in combat and knowledge of naval battles from the past four months of fighting, nothing to do with my own self-brewed confidence in myself as a person capable of making things happen.

Umikaze is in between Harusame-onee-san and Murasame-onee-san, having a little bit of gregariousness but also having a bit of confidence too. While gentle like Harusame-onee-san and friendly like Murasame-onee-san, Umikaze is more assertive than Harusame-onee-san and less friendly than Murasame-onee-san, being friendly more for the sake of being polite than for the sake of making friends. Plus, she is more combat-versatile than the two of them as well - I believe she can keep up with Kawakaze, even. I may be wrong, however.

Yamakaze is like a less extreme Shigure-onee-san in that she is very well known for her combat ability and athleticism. She is not quite friendly towards others, as she likes to be independent and prefers to be alone, and she is more prone to anger and bitterness than the opposite.

Suzukaze has gregariousness, combat ability, and confidence. She can get along very well with others, but like Shiratsuyu-onee-san, sometimes Suzukaze's mannerisms and assertive personality that tends to delve into aggressive territory can get her in trouble with others. Suzukaze loves to win and hates to lose, so she tries her very best in training and is well known for doing very well in our little fleet, but she can't hope to match the power of some of the other destroyers, though this is in part due to the fact that she just hasn't had as much experience as me or Shigure-onee-san or Kiyoshimo-chan. But I feel that more than everything else, Suzukaze doesn't have a unique mannerism that makes her stand out from the rest of her ship sisters. I almost feel as though Suzukaze can too easily be labeled as "just another destroyer", and my feelings on that matter are quite complicated.

In this sense, Kawakaze is the most appealing out of all of us Shiratsuyu-Class destroyers. While I feel quite happy that Kawakaze can quickly become the most likable Shiratsuyu-Class destroyer, something about it is very unsettling. How should I put it...it makes me feel very...insecure. That...that maybe, perhaps given time enough, Kawakaze will transcend the rest of us, her ship sisters, and become the only relevant Shiratsuyu-Class, and the rest of us regress to become more poster ship girls than friends or comrades. I think I don't have to worry about such a fate ever becoming a reality, but...but I just don't know. I feel very uncertain. And it makes me very uncomfortable.

I really wish I had someone to talk to about this matter, but just who can I speak to? No one feels appropriate. I can only merely entertain these kinds of thoughts to myself and hope to find answers to them on my own, if there can even be any answers to find at all.

Speaking of Harusame-onee-san...I hope we find you soon. We all miss you, Harusame-onee-san. Please return to us quickly.

I love you, Teitoku.

五月雨


	7. 六月四日（水）

**六月四日（水）**

I wrote in yesterday's journal entry about how I was wondering to whom I should speak to about all these concerns that I've been having lately. That was a silly question in retrospect. I have the best person in the world who isn't one of my fellow sisters for matters like these, and she so happened to visit me while I was finishing up my office duties this evening.

Yuubari-san came to see me like Kawakaze did for me yesterday night, bringing me some onigiri and water from the mess hall, and because today I didn't have much to do, Yuubari-san and I talked together late into the night.

Admittedly, I haven't been spending enough time with Yuubari-san lately. Because Shigure-onee-san, Kiyoshimo-chan, and I weren't informed who would join us here at Atsugi Naval Air Station, so being able to reunite with Yuubari-san here came as a complete surprise. I think that perhaps meeting Yuubari-san again like this was what I needed to put Teitoku's fate at Okinawa behind me - without Yuubari-san, I'm...not sure if I could have functioned properly as a ship girl - and an officer, at that. Knowing that I would serve with Yuubari-san this time around raised my spirits tremendously, because I knew I had someone like her to confide to whenever I wanted to if I ever felt I couldn't take it anymore.

But I suppose there was just so much that had to be done over the past month that I just never found the time like I did this evening to sit down and catch up with Yuubari-san - really the only times when we ever could have were during mealtimes or during military training, and during those times the two of us would always be busy hanging out with other ship girls. I don't know, we just...never found the time somehow.

Yuubari-san admitted this first to me and apologized to me, because she knows how much I care for her. I'd rescued her crew during the war, when she sank, and when we were first reconstructed back into the world in this life, I promised her I wouldn't let anything else happen to her again, although I get the feeling she doesn't quite take me seriously. But that aside, Yuubari-san and I are best friends. I love her as much as I do my own ship sisters, and that says a lot. I apologized to her right back, since I don't feel like it's Yuubari-san's fault in particular that we hadn't been spending as much time together as we might've wanted.

Yuubari-san asked me to talk about my time down at Okinawa. She was deeply interested in what happened down there, how the Admiral was (it was no secret that Teitoku was American), and what life was like down there, so I went into depth about everything I possibly could about my four months in Okinawa. I talked about daily life, our schedule, our training, and the base itself. I talked about sortieing, about the Abyssals, about how everyone in the fleet quickly became great ship girls out at sea. I talked about the night battles, the great victories, the horrible losses, and the times when we managed to actually capture Abyssal prisoners. I talked about how we grew stronger over time. I talked about the impact of Kiyoshimo's sinking and modernization.

But most important of all, I talked about Teitoku. I talked about how he was like at first. I talked about how he changed over time. I talked about how my thoughts about him slowly changed with him. And, of course, I talked about how he changed all of us. I talked about how I eventually fell in love with him, and how he made me a woman.

Like I thought, Yuubari-san was quite flustered when she learned just how far Teitoku and I had taken our relationship. On one hand, she said that she was happy for me that I'd found such a wonderful young officer to have feelings for. Seeing that I was normally a bit of a timid, reserved girl, Yuubari-san said that sometimes she'd wonder if after our military service, should we be decommissioned and enter civilian life, whether I'd ever manage to find a suitable husband for myself. But on the other hand, Yuubari-san said that this wasn't something that I should take lightly for two reasons. (It's not like I wasn't, but I still listened anyway.)

The first reason is political: our superiors in the military and the government would most likely highly disapproval of my relationship with Teitoku. Yuubari-san pays close attention to the news; every morning, she can always be seen at the mess hall drinking coffee and reading the morning paper, the _Asahi Shinbun._ Therefore, she is always knowledgeable on the most recent political news. And since the _Asahi_ is more of a leftist newspaper, it can be sure to consistently report on the right-wing tendencies of the government that appears to be more or less the current state of our country from a civilian perspective. She also always talks with the mechanics and servicemen who work on site here at Atsugi Naval Air Station, chatting with them about the local news and, more importantly, the latest news on military command. Yuubari-san firmly believes that there are too many signs of our nation turning more and more militant, just like how our country was during the war, to ignore. According to Yuubari-san, she feels that "this nation is gearing up for another war that doesn't need to be fought", like we're trying to force open a war just because we thought we could. And just like last time, our country sees America as yet another potential rival, mainly because of the Okinawa ambush. And so because leadership in both the Diet and the JSDF seem to be right-wing, Yuubari-san is worried that my affair with Teitoku will be uncovered and used against me somehow. It's both political and social dirt on my hands, and it could come back to bite me. And if that does happen, who knows what could become of me. I would be fortunate to get away would only a demotion. If I'm unfortunate...

The second reason is personal. Yuubari-san asked me if I truly, one hundred percent knew that Teitoku was a trustworthy person. While highly unlikely, Yuubari-san herself thinks that it's not out of the realm of possibility that the Okinawa base could have been an American ploy to control the Moebius Platoon out of Japanese hegemony. She assured me that she wasn't saying that because she wanted to be suspicious, but instead for the sake of playing it safe. In the military, you can never quite be sure what the intentions of anything are, so it's better not to assume anything. I answered yes. I told Yuubari-san that Teitoku was someone I would sacrifice my own life for, he meant that much to me. While Yuubari-san said that she was willing to accept my decision to put my faith in Teitoku, she warned me that for my sake, I should be open to the possibility of looking for someone else to be my boyfriend, preferably a native Japanese. It's that she doesn't trust Teitoku, it's that she is worried something bad might happen to me because of my relationship with Teitoku.

That aside, Yuubari-san complemented me on my work as a lieutenant. To think that there would come a day that a warship like us would ever earn rank and uniform in our own navy - Yuubari-san gave me a hug and said she was extremely proud of me and my service. She said that she could tell, just by watching me train the destroyers during naval training, why I had been made an officer. She reckoned that I could easily hold my own against the light cruisers in one-on-ones. I think she was saying that just to try to make me get all flustered. I can safely report that she failed.

I was then able to speak to her about the things that were on my mind. I talked to her about Shigure-onee-san, namely her awkward relationship with Kawakaze but also about her own relationship with Teitoku, about how we both share similar feelings for him. I would have talked to her about the other things, but then we realized that it was already really late and we needed to head back to the dorms to get enough sleep for tomorrow, so Shigure-onee-san was really all we had time to talk about.

Yuubari-san pointed out that the kind of relationship Shigure-onee-san and Kawakaze share is quite similar to our own, the one between me and Yuubari-san. Both Shigure-onee-san and I witnessed the sinking of Kawakaze and Yuubari-san, respectively. But clearly, the ways in which we viewed our respective incidents are massively different. According to Yuubari-san, this is mainly Shigure-onee-san's problem that she must deal with. Normally, talking to people with emotional problems is the best way to help them begin to recover and find solutions for their problems. Typically getting people like that to discuss their problems alone is therapeutic. But not so for Shigure-onee-san, because her connection to Kawakaze was in no way simple. It's layered with multiple levels of emotional discord. The death of a fellow ship sister, the death of a fellow comrade, Shigure-onee-san's horrible record of survivor's guilt, Shigure-onee-san's unforgiving personality towards herself, and perhaps most notable: a memory of a past life. Yuubari-san pointed out that this wasn't something humans ever have to worry about (normally, that is): the guilt of a possible sin in a previous life unless they were Buddhist, and even then, it's not like typically, you're ever conscious of something like that. But we ship girls - because we've been "resurrected" in a sense, we have the memories of when we were warships, not people. We remember everything that we've done in our past lives, during the war. So therein comes this oftentimes jarring clash of conscience, as some of us with more complicated personas, like Shigure-onee-san, don't know how to cope with their warship conscience and their human conscience.

Right now, Yuubari-san said, Shigure-onee-san is most likely suffering from her inability to cope with the differences in her two consciences. While for most of us ship girls settling the differences between our two consciences is a relatively simple matter, for some of us like Shigure-onee-san, if she could never learn to get over it, the results could be dangerous. Yuubari-san gave Yukikaze-chan as an example, because like Shigure-onee-san, she was rebuilt with a terrible sense of survivor's guilt - in fact, an even worse case. But because of Yukikaze-chan's more optimistic personality, Yukikaze-chan was easily able to put her past behind her with the help of those who had sunk in the sorties that they were in during the war.

I asked Yuubari-san how Shigure-onee-san could be healed like Yukikaze-chan was, but she said that the answer was complicated, if there even was one. Should the same solution that Yukikaze-chan used to recover from her own survivor's guilt be applied to Shigure-onee-san, the situation would become complicated very quickly. For one, Yukikaze-chan's recovery depended on the girls who Yukikaze-chan had seen sunk herself and therefore felt very bad about. Their cooperation in helping her cheer up and assuring her that what happened in the past had no relation to how they would act in the present was critical in alleviating the conflict of consciences in Yukikaze-chan's mental state. We already know that Kawakaze is all too willing to sit down to talk with Shigure-onee-san and tell her that what happened at Vela Gulf could be finally buried for the sake of their sistership. The problem is Shigure-onee-san herself. Yuubari-san said that the _only_ problem was Shigure-onee-san's unwillingness to part with the past for the sake of the present and the future. Shigure-onee-san is the one blocking herself from freeing herself from the grip of her survivor's guilt. Most likely, Shigure-onee-san feels that she can't be forgiven for her "sins" that she committed in the past - not even Kawakaze or anyone else who'd sunk in her sorties could unshackle her from those chains. She most likely feels that she's forever imprisoned, and that most likely she's resigned herself to a fate of perpetual emotional conflict of wanting to escape that torture of being tormented by her past and wanting to repent for her sins, sins that she isn't responsible for in any way.

And because I mentioned how Shigure-onee-san had feelings for Teitoku, Yuubari-san suggested that one way was to have Teitoku help Shigure-onee-san get over her conflicted feelings. If she wasn't willing to speak with any of her own ship sisters, as she's already demonstrated, perhaps she would be willing to listen to Teitoku, which I know she would, if I know her as I should as a ship sister. Obviously Teitoku is not available at our disposal, we cannot rely on this method, and instead, we must look to others to have them speak to Shigure-onee-san. Yuubari-san firmly believes that Shigure-onee-san cannot get over her pain and troubles by her own volition; she must have outside intervention. The problem now is how to effectively select the intervention necessary to make an impact on Shigure-onee-san.

And luckily for us, both Fusou-san and Yamashiro-san are deployed here at Atsugi Naval Air Station. And that is where we ended our time together in the office. Yuubari-san told me to take some time tomorrow and speak to Fusou-san and Yamashiro-san about Shigure-onee-san. Shigure-onee-san has already shown that she is rather close to them, because of their history together at Surigao Strait. Perhaps they are our key to finally unlocking Shigure-onee-san's aching and closed heart.

Teitoku, I hope that you will give me the power I need to help Shigure-onee-san finally recover from her internal turmoil. It really breaks my heart to see her suffer like this. I want to help her. I really do, because she doesn't deserve this, and neither does Kawakaze. No one deserves a fate like hers.

I love you, Teitoku.

五月雨


	8. 六月五日（木）

**六月五日（木）**

At 1230 hours exactly, Yokosuka Naval Yards was attacked by the Abyssals in the middle of our training out on the harbor. This is the first sighting of the Abyssals and the first weapons contact against said Abyssals since the attack on the Okinawa naval base one month ago.

I saw Harusame-onee-san. She was there, leading the attack.

So much in my head...I don't know where to start...

I'll start with the battle. The Abyssals first launched three waves of enemy aircraft to breach base security defenses, and right as the aircraft began to attack, we picked up the signatures of the first wave of incoming Abyssals. The experienced ship girls, me, Shigure-onee-san, Kiyoshimo-chan, Goya-chan, Yamato-san, and Taihou-senpai, all immediately sortied to the front of the naval yards. I assumed command of the situation, as my rank as a lieutenant would require me to do so, and I ordered our ship girl fleet to back us up with supporting fire and the carriers to begin launching all the planes they could spare, because in a surprise attack like this, we need information on the enemy formation and positions as soon as possible. I also relayed to the control crews aboard the modern destroyers _Samidare, Kirishima,_ and _Takanami_ to ready their battle stations and engage the incoming enemy aircraft.

We quickly realized the gravity of the situation: this was a massive Abyssal ambush, similar to the ambush at Okinawa. We immediately recognized some of the enemy signatures such as Re-Class, Ta-Class, Ru-Class, and Chuukansei-ki-hime, and Taihou grimly remarked that it was possible some of us would have to sink today if we wanted to defend our naval base. Indeed...she ended up being right.

Kiyoshimo, with her Minigun, easily handled the anti-air fire, and the other destroyers behind us also supported her to take out the ones she couldn't shoot down in time. However, because the Abyssals had sent their planes overland from the southwest, from Sagami Bay, it became complicated to shoot them down, because Kiyoshimo's targeting range with her Minigun extended so far that if she had begun shooting down the enemy planes, they would crash-land into civilian territory, so in order to prevent collateral damage on civilian property, I ordered the fleet to hold fire until it was safe to shoot them down. By doing so, I knew that the enemy planes would have an opportunity to bomb the naval yards and the ships, which they did. I had given out the evacuation order to the base the moment we realized this was an ambush scenario, but the enemy planes still did a lot of damage.

The crews aboard the modern destroyers docked at the naval yards with us informed us that they'd pinpointed the location from which the enemy aircraft were being launched and transmitted the coordinates to us, so I ordered Fubuki-chan, Asashimo-chan, Mikazuki-chan, and Fumizuki-chan to bombard the enemy carriers' position. I'd seen this before; the Abyssals sometimes like to set up traps for us in which their carriers, while in some kind of stealth mode in which they are undetectable on our radars unless they are very close, launch planes from a secret location safely. It appears that not even modern radar can detect them, but it seems that the weakness of this strategy is that modern radar technology can still pick up planes as soon as they are launching and accurately pinpoint carrier locations.

I had Shigure-onee-san and Kiyoshimo stand close to other ship girls so that our shields can protect multiple people to guard as best we could against the inevitable Abyssal long-range artillery that I thought was sure to come. But it didn't. Instead of taking their time to soften up our guard by engaging in long-range bombardment, they instantly sailed at maximum speed up the Uraga Channel and tore into our vanguard. We didn't expect them to abandon long-range fire missions and instead simply rush us like that. Because of this unexpected tactic that none of us expected, Re-Class was able to strike from an optimal range and killed Taihou-senpai with just two shots before we could decide how to deal with their opening strategy.

Strictly speaking, from a tactical standpoint, Taihou-senpai's sinking at the very start of the fight was not too impactful, because I'd already sent a request order to Atsugi Naval Air Station to deploy all air wings available, and they arrived within minutes to support us. Without that air support, I'm afraid the Abyssal gambit to simply charge us with no restraint could have done far more significant damage to the Yokosuka Naval Yards.

But still, there was still that time window in which we, the fleet of ship girls, had to hold our waters to prevent the Abyssals from breaking through. With Taihou-senpai already taken out of the fight, Shigure-onee-san, Kiyoshimo-chan, Goya-chan, and Yamato-san knew that we had to be the ones to hold position until air support arrived.

That was when I saw Harusame-onee-san. Both Shigure-onee-san and I saw her, at the forefront of the first few Abyssals coming within vision range. And Harusame-onee-san saw us too.

It had to be her. There was no mistaking her appearance. However, her skin had turned pale, as all Abyssals have, and her beautiful pink hair had turned a sickly white-light-purple. Her beret got replaced by some sort of Abyssal headpiece, and most disturbing of all, she had no legs.

And luckily or unluckily for us, Harusame-onee-san ran away. The instant we laid eyes on each other, she hesitated, stopped, turned around, and simply fled. Re-Class and Ta-Class, who we saw were escorting her, appeared genuinely confused at Harusame-onee-san's erratic behavior, but they disregarded her quickly and began attacking us. Therefore, for fifteen furious minutes, our fleet, supported by local base troops firing on the Abyssals from the harbor and by the modern destroyers that the Abyssals were trying to attack, held off the Abyssals' unrelenting aggression just barely until our air support from Atsugi Naval Air Station arrived.

The Abyssal attack today was fast and furious. It was over as soon as it had begun - in the midst of the confusion, the urgency, and the frantic atmosphere, it literally felt like only a heartbeat had gone by. One moment I was out in the harbor training with Kawakaze and Amatsukaze-chan, and the next moment, I realized that Kawakaze was dead.

Kawakaze is dead. I...don't know what else to say. She's dead. She, Taihou-senpai, Suzukaze, Shirayuki-chan, and Nagara-senpai all got sunk today.

The grief will hit me soon, I know it. Today has just been...numbing. I can't feel anything right now. In fact, I don't even know why I'm writing this journal. I should be in bed right now...crying myself to sleep like I usually do. My hands are shaking and I can't stop them.

And even though I'm by myself as I write this, somehow, I think I can still hear Shigure-onee-san's cries still echo in my mind.

Please, Teitoku, make it stop. Make my hands stop shaking...

五月雨


	9. 六月六日（金）

**六月六日（金）**

Because of yesterday's attack by the Abyssals, I have been flown out here to the Yokosuka Naval Yards once again to give an eyewitness account of the battle and related events to the Kaijou Jietai committee who flew in from Tokyo nearby early. I had to wake up and report to the airfield very early in the morning as my friends bid me goodbye and saw me off.

There, at the Yokosuka Naval Yards, Rear Admiral Takahashi-san introduced me to to the commanding officers of the Kaijou Jietai:

Chief of Maritime Staff Akiyama Yuuma,

Admiral Maki Rokurou,

Admiral Fujioka Katsu,

Vice Admiral Himura Goro,

and Takahashi-san himself. I didn't know he was part of the main navy committee; after nearly a month of office work and never being aware of this, I was certainly caught off guard when Takahashi-san revealed this part of his identity to me. This was an incredibly well-kept secret, and I'm somewhat impressed that I, his personal secretary, had never found out.

Together, escorted by a squad of heavily armed sailors assigned to us from the naval yards for our protection, we toured the base to inspect and review the extent of the damage done, in addition to receiving damage assessment reports from sailors at hand too. I will spare this journal of the technical specifics, but lot of the storage warehouses that were near the scene of the attack suffered heavy collateral damage and exploded some of the supplies of ammunition there, but fortunately they had been organized in a way that chain-reactions would be prevented, so a good portion of the supplies were able to be salvaged. The _Samidare_ , my namesake warship, had taken the brunt of the Abyssal damage out of the three warships docked there at the time yesterday, with repairs desperately needed port-side near the stern and on the 12.7cm turrets, and the _Kirishima_ and _Takanami_ suffered other various damages in other places.

So in my new Lieutenant uniform, I carefully detailed the battle to the committee, explaining to them step by step how the battle unfolded. With my photographic memory as a ship girl, I could have simply just put my memory files on a USB thumb drive or some other form of electronic storage and given it to the committee to view for themselves, but Chief of Staff Akiyama preferred the old-fashioned way of having me guide them through it. There were often times when I found it difficult to explain a particular moment, such as Taihou-senpai's and Kawakaze's sinkings, and luckily, the committee was understanding and told me that it was alright if I found some things hard to talk about. This process took us the entire morning and past lunch into the afternoon, but with my assistance, the navy committee was able to get a firm grip on the situation from yesterday and make appropriate executive decisions regarding base repairs, reorganization of defense structure, and the early-warning systems for future ambushes from the Abyssals.

I find it interesting and considerate of Admiral Maki's comment to me at one point during the tour of the base. When we went aboard the heavily damaged _Samidare_ , Admiral Maki asked me,

"Taii, this may be a foolish question, but do you perhaps, by chance, also share the same sense of damage with this warship?"

I shook my head and said no. I understood what he was trying to ask: he wanted to know if I was somehow metaphysically linked to the JMSDF _Samidare_. It isn't unreasonable to think this. After all, ship girls like me are more or less the reincarnations of the warships of the old Imperial Japanese Navy; our existences in themselves are, in a way, miracles. So it wouldn't be out of the question if I somehow shared some kind of link with the warships, but for better or for worse, this is not the case. However, I did tell him that I was deeply saddened that the warship that shared my name and was my modern-era counterpart had been hurt so. I could very easily imagine it whimpering and crying, in my own voice, in pain.

Also quite flattering was the fact that when we boarded the _Samidare_ to inspect its damages, the crew there assembled to meet us and salute us in greeting. At first I thought that they were just paying their respects to the navy committee who had flown in for inspection and base review from the capital, but none of the other committee officers returned the salutes when we boarded. In fact, Takahashi-san gave me a nudge and whispered to me that I was the one who was being saluted. Surprised and flustered, I didn't know how to react at first in my shock, so I just looked around all timid and stuff and gave everyone a full salute. I felt so embarrassed...even the commanding officer of the _Samidare_ , Captain Hisakawa Isamu, a young man who I heard had graduated at the top of his class in naval college and was fortunate enough to be assigned as captain of the destroyer as his very first post. He seemed very flustered too when I passed him. I get this feeling that maybe he sees me in a bit of a different light, but...I wonder how I will talk to him, if I ever do...

After our tour, we went into the headquarters office of the naval yards for some coffee and onigiri, since none of us had lunch yet. Chief of Staff Akiyama-san asked me if I had any questions for them, and I said I did. I asked them what would become of those who had sunk in action yesterday. I brought up my experience earlier in the year at Okinawa, that any ship girl sunk in action was recovered from the battle, brought back, and flown to America for reconstruction and repairs and brought back. I asked if similar steps would be taken to ensure that those killed in action would receive the same treatment. Unfortunately, Akiyama-san told me that as of right now, the navy had no advanced enough infrastructure or technology to revive dead ship girls, from what he'd been told. We did not have the technology to repair ship girls; after all, the American Seal Team Six group had been in charge of the entire Platoon's creation, for they were the ones who'd been commissioned to complete the project. Therefore, while Akiyama-san assured me that the bodies of our fallen comrades were being kept safe and preserved in the chance that they could be repaired (none of them had suffered damage to their main processing units), I could not be told an ETA on when they would return.

It was then that Admiral Fujioka voiced his opinion that the Kaijou Jietai would develop its own infrastructure dedicated to the upkeep, maintenance, repair, and reconstruction of the ship girls of the Moebius Four Platoon. We no longer needed the Americans to interfere in our naval activities anymore; we ought to employ our best scientists and engineers in the country to replicate the work that Seal Team Six had done and acquire this technology ourselves. In the face of our rising naval power and national hegemony, now was not the time to look to the Americans for help with a problem that was strictly our own.

I suppose Yuubari-san was right; there is definitely a strong anti-American sentiment within the echelons of command in our navy, and I now know where it's coming from. But I kept my mouth shut.

Akiyama-san, thankfully, interrupted Fujioka and said that even if we were to do as the latter suggested, we would still have no idea when such infrastructure would be ready to be used. We didn't even know if it could even be done, first of all. The Moebius Four Platoon was an incredibly vital asset to the Kaijou Jietai, he stated. Our maintenance and upkeep was extremely important, perhaps more important than anyone in the room at the moment was aware of, because we were the most effective measure of defense against ambushes committed by these Abyssal enemies. Without us being there yesterday, Akiyama-san claimed, the Yokosuka Naval Yards would have been lost, and the headquarters of the Kaijou Jietai would have been decimated, putting a huge setback on our naval activities for the year.

It was at this time that Chief of Staff Akiyama-san and Takahashi-san presented me with two service medals: the Patriot Medal of National Defense and the Order of the Navy Badge. Akiyama-san himself pinned those awards to my left breast. "For your crucial role in the defense of one of the nation's most important naval bases and for your timely and swift leadership and performance against enemy attack, we present you these awards," Akiyama-san declared. He said that while he would have very much liked to give me a promotion straight to the rank of Captain, officers of the other branches of the Jietai would object to a fresh officer getting another promotion so quickly and would not listen to the circumstances, so he apologized to me, saying that he was not able to give me the recognition I deserved for my service, so instead, he and the committee decided to make do with two of the most prestigious military decorations I could have received. He also apologized for not doing this in a more appropriate setting, but as time did not permit them to go out of their way to perform a proper ceremony for my awards, this was the best they could have done.

I didn't mind any of the limitations at all. Now that I am writing this journal with my two new decorations sitting beside my hand, I can't help but to feel so...exhilarated. I never expected to receive _military decorations_ , much less a position as an officer in the Navy, so to get these and have the Chief of Staff, the highest ranked person in the entire Navy, pin them to my chest...it's so surreal. I felt so proud when I stood and saluted the committee after I received my awards. It really motivated me to keep doing my job as a faithful officer of the Kaijou Jietai, and I really am thankful to Chief of Staff Akiyama-san for honoring me in such a flattering way. I really didn't expect any of this.

Although...when I came back to base, my friends and the other ship girls here at Atsugi Naval Air Station came out to congratulate me on my awards because Takahashi-san had apparently messaged ahead of us about the news. While I was really happy that everyone was there to congratulate me, even those who had expressed doubts about my leadership like Hatsukaze-chan and Yamashiro-san, I couldn't help but notice that Shigure-onee-san, Kawakaze, and Suzukaze were notably missing. I forced myself to hide my true feelings, but now that I am alone and writing this journal, I feel like I would do anything to be able to rewind the clock so that Kawakaze and Suzukaze could have survived to see me come back to base with my awards. I wanted them to be here so badly when I came back with my awards. I wanted them to hug me and tell me that they were proud of me. I wanted to show them that their older sister had done them proud, that I had given honor to the Shiratsuyu-Class and gave our superiors a good note about us. Instead, I came back to base...all alone.

It's painful. It really is. It's like how I want to get rid of the tears that have dripped onto the pages of my journal notebook, but I can't. Even if I wipe them away, the residue will still remain and make the paper all crinkled where they have fallen.

I...I have to cry. I have to stop writing...I can't stop these tears...

Tei oku, wh r e are y u? I want yo to h g me, but you re no here

C n't you s e th t I'm cryi g? I want see you. I _ne d_ to see you. I need you, T itok

It hurts so m ch I cant st p cr ing please pl ase ple s ...

I j st want y u to k ss me and ma e all this p n ju t go aw y...

五 雨


	10. 六月七日（土）

**六月七日（** ** **土** ）**

Today, Takahashi-san called me to his office from breakfast to discuss some important things, which I was very glad he did. Earlier this morning, I woke up and wandered over to the dorm room that Kawakaze and Suzukaze had been sharing. Without really thinking, I climbed onto Suzukaze's bed and hugged her blanket. It still had her cool scent on it. I couldn't help it - I cried some more into her blanket. If Suzukaze was going to die like this, I wanted to at least make up to her, get rid of our conflict earlier this week. But I didn't even get to do that. Worse, Asashimo-chan, who lost an arm in the ambush attack at the naval yards, walked by, and since I accidentally left the door open, she walked in, wondering who was inside, and saw me doing such an embarrassing thing, and from there, rumors spread to the other ship girls that I was suffering from depression. That's why I wanted to get away from the rest of the fleet, because everyone was staying away from me out of pity, because they thought that I just wanted to be alone and did so out of respect when in fact it's the exact opposite that I want.

What's even worse is that now, with Shigure-onee-san's consistent behavior, I have heard some of the destroyers call us the most unfortunate class of destroyers in the navy. I don't want that to be our reputation. While I don't _despise_ it, I resent it - the fact that Kawakaze and Suzukaze had to die just to end up with a reputation like that slapped onto them is...unforgivable. But what can I do? This is the hand that has been dealt to us, and we must live with it until future events prove it otherwise.

That aside, Takahashi-san called me to his office. The first order of business he talked to me about regarded the issue of maintenance of the Platoon - specifically, the repairing and reconstruction/revival of sunken ship girls. Takahashi-san informed me that the bodies of our fallen were being kept in Tokyo, at Tokyo Medical University, so that the country's top doctors and surgeons, called by the government to participate in a private venture to contribute to national defense, are now studying and analyzing the bodies. Takahashi-san said that the committee from yesterday had informed him earlier this morning that just today, the Diet had authorized a fully funded program whose goal would be to replicate the technology behind us ship girls. However, Takahashi-san, Akiyama-san, and Maki-san were of the opinion that this would take too long, that swift action would be necessary to get the ship girls who had been killed in action back on their feet.

The Rear Admiral, therefore, suggested to me that this was a secret plan that he and Akiyama-san were formulating in private, and because I was his most trusted ship girl and the most decorated (well, I should say, the _only_ decorated ship girl), he would divulge this information to me too. He said that they were thinking about perhaps entrusting me to a highly classified mission to sail across the Pacific to make contact with our original producers, the American Seal Team Six. The reason why this mission is so classified is because over the course of the last month, the Diet had passed military laws that forbade unauthorized contact with any foreign military or political entity, that all such military and political contact coming into or going out of Japan would be through the Diet itself, therefore filtering what information goes in and out. By doing this, the Diet had intentionally severed the Jietai from maintaining any sort of contact with other militaries around the world, an effect that had had drastic consequences on all branches of our military. I will spare the details for now, since there have been too many to list, but one of the more obvious effects is that we currently have no way of reconstructing us ship girls if we fall in combat.

Takahashi-san laid out the details for me: while the mission timeline was not yet set in stone, I was to be flown out to the ocean, over Chiba, about fifty kilometers out, and deployed onto the water and trek to the American West Coast and make contact with any military entity I could and attempt to establish friendly communications with authorization from the highest ranking admiral of the Kaijou Jietai. I interrupted and stated that I knew of a critical base of Seal Team Six and could travel to its coordinates in an attempt to make contact with the developers immediately, and Takahashi-san liked the idea and told me to do that instead. Once there, the Rear Admiral instructed me to communicate to our developers and inform them of our situation and attempt to negotiate some kind of deal with them to have them repair our ship girls. It didn't matter how; if we can come out of this situation with the insurance that our ship girls can get repaired, then we gain a net positive. The fact that we also have a lot of wounded here at base too, Asashimo-chan's lost arm, for example, further puts pressure on this mission's significance.

Now, Takahashi-san made it very clear that I did not have to take this mission if I didn't want to. I was the most experienced ship girl at base here; having fought all those battles during my time based at Okinawa in the Pacific against the Abyssals, I alone could judge the feasibility of such a dangerous but critical mission. In addition, for the sake of my own safety, Takahashi-san pondered the option of having me take another ship girl from this base to escort me to America, but if I took too many, the base authorities would know that something was going on from the look of all these missing ship girls. One, perhaps at most two. And definitely not a battleship or carrier - their absences would be sniffed out immediately.

But I immediately accepted the mission anyway. I am very well aware of just how risky and dangerous this mission can be and will be. We have absolutely no information on enemy Abyssal fleet movement or logistics; the military satellites that we depended on during my time in Okinawa are no longer accessible because they are property of the American military (perhaps specifically that of Seal Team Six, even), and the satellites that we have are either being prepped for launch or are already in orbit and cannot be reconfigured for military use, leaving us in the dark; and who knows just how many Abyssals are lurking in the depths of the Pacific. With my destroyer speed specifications (optimal cruising speed ~150 km/hr, maximum cruising speed ~200 km/hr, maximum speed 300 km/hr), it should take me a little over two days to reach America, but this is only assuming I do not encounter any enemy task force along the way, which I most likely will. In addition, I will have to carry my own supplies with me. Luckily, the voyage itself will not be so long that the weight of supplies needs to be factored in, but should I be found by the enemy and they happen to destroy my supplies somehow and I do not have enough fuel to complete the voyage, I will be stranded. I don't want to know what happens to a ship girl when they become completely depleted of fuel, let alone starve to death due to lack of supplies out in the middle of the ocean...

The point is that I not only feel obligated to undertake this mission, but I also want to. As a ship girl, I want to do everything in my power to help my comrades come back to life, for myself and for the ship sisters who are suffering from their deaths. As an officer and a leader of the fleet, like Teitoku has taught me and showed me, I want to not only look after my fellow ship girls but also prove to everyone that a ship girl being an officer can be just as good as a human officer; I want to demonstrate to everyone that I can be a great officer and...perhaps one day, become a great Admiral. An Admiral who is also a ship girl...this feeling excites me somewhat...not to mention clearing my class name of this ill-fortuned nickname that has been designated to us.

But most importantly, as a ship sister, I want my sisters back. I want Kawakaze back. I want Suzukaze back. I want Shigure-onee-san to come back, in a different sense. Normal humans do not have the luxury of having their friends reconstructed and brought back to life. However, as a ship girl, I do. And I am keenly aware of this. I have an opportunity to bring my own friends, my own sisters back to life, something that no human being possesses, and I will capitalize on this opportunity if it is the last thing I do.

Therefore, undertaking this mission is not a choice, nor is it an obligation. I do not do this for the sake of seeking more military decorations or making a name for myself or doing this for the sake of righteous justice. No, it's nothing complicated.

It is my own personal duty. I choose to do this because I want to, and I know what I want. I remember reading in Teitoku's journal about how he talked about honor in Japanese culture and in other contexts. In my case, there is no honor involved, because there doesn't need to be.

The second order of business was also something of extremely high classification. Takahashi-san informed me that the committee received word that the Diet had been constantly receiving phone calls from a political member of the nation of Germany over the past week or so, and when they finally decided to speak with him, they discovered that this person was the Chancellor of Germany, and that the reason why he had been trying to get a hold of them was because he wanted to speak with someone in the navy about negotiations for a possible joint exchange training program/regimen. Akiyama-san suspects that the Diet simply left the call hanging after that and refused to talk to him anymore, meaning that they probably are not in favor of establishing firm military relations with Germany, which comes off as very strange to me, as they were our allies once upon a time.

But then this situation begs the question: just why were the Germans trying to negotiate for something like this, like a joint exercise program? Why now, and in what fashion?

Takahashi-san then suggested something that I would have never been able to guess myself: he suspects that the Germans are also in possession of ship girls like us. This notion is unbelievable - assuming the Germans do have ship girls of their own, since when did they have them? They couldn't have developed the technology for us on their own, so most likely Seal Team Six shared the technology with them, sold the technology to them, or gave them the technology in some way, shape or form. Currently we have no way of proving that the Germans do have ship girls of their own, so Takahashi-san's claim may be unfounded, but if this is true, just how many other countries also have ship girls? And more pressing, do our developers know about their existence? Do they know about the fact that the German Chancellor has been trying to make contact with us for a joint exercise program most likely involving us ship girls? But that also begs the question of how we even know this joint-exercise program is related to us ship girls in the first place.

Therefore, my secondary objective for this mission is to find out more about the German situation through Seal Team Six. Takahashi-san asked me to think carefully about my mission, and perhaps about who I would want to bring with me, if I wanted to. He advised me that going it alone was highly dangerous, and that I should at least take someone.

I think I already know who I have in mind...


	11. 六月八日（日）

**六月八日（** ** **日** ）**

I confided all the information pertaining to my secret mission I received from Takahashi-san yesterday to Yuubari-san. She was very excited by the fact that I had received such a mission; she reckoned that this was a warship version of tactical espionage action, though I feel as though she made a reference that flew right over my head. But regardless, she was also very worried for me when she, too, quickly grasped the risk that accompanied a mission like the one I have been assigned.

When I revealed to her that Takahashi-san was willing to allow me to recruit another ship girl from our base to accompany me to America, Yuubari-san immediately recommended that I talk to the destroyers. Her reasoning was such that time and speed was of the essence with this mission, not so much firepower and offensive capability. With a mission like this, she said, fighting should be my lowest priority, an emergency response only fit for the most dire of situations. In most cases, simply avoiding contact with possible enemies and evading those who may sniff out my progress is the only thing I must do. Because at most two ship girls, one of whom is me, can embark on this mission, even if I were to take a carrier or battleship with me, just the two of us would be powerless against another full squadron of enemies. I myself could not defend an entire carrier or battleship adequately enough, and vice versa, a carrier or battleship would not be able to outrun enemies in the event that we must. Therefore, another destroyer would be critical in helping double, so to speak, my chances of making this secret mission a success.

Yuubari-san also ruled herself out, saying that she didn't have the constitution to be able to escort me properly. She, just like her warship self from the war, had been built much weaker than her fellow light cruisers at the benefit of other technical specifications such as improved sensors, expanded processing power, and knowledge of all kinds of equipment. This was even before I tried to ask her to be the one to join me on this mission...I got the feeling that she was able to read my intentions even before I said them. Even though she would have gladly accepted my offer, Yuubari-san said that she wasn't backing out because she was scared or anything, but she said that a destroyer would serve my purposes much better. She didn't want to jeopardize the mission because of her so-called inadequacy, which I, naturally, objected to. Despite her innate weaknesses due to her status as an experimental light cruiser, I don't actually think she is as weak as she portrays herself to be. But nevertheless, as much as I wish it not to be true, Yuubari-san is right. She is not meant for a mission like this, and she helped me fully realize this. I had only asked her because there might have been a wild chance for me to have convinced her successfully to come with me. But I do not want to try to press a pointless case, so I gave up asking her.

Speaking of destroyers, Yuubari-san recommended specifically for me to take Shigure-onee-san along. At first I objected. I said that Shigure-onee-san is in no condition to undertake such a risky mission. Given her current emotional and psychological state, I have very serious doubts that she would be able to carry out the mission properly, and as a sister, I want her to stay here and try to recover as much as she can. It is not because, I want to be very clear about this, I doubt her physical _ability_. How could I? Shigure-onee-san is one of the strongest ship girls Teitoku has managed to produce. Everybody back at Okinawa agreed that Shigure-onee-san was among the top four most dangerous destroyers at base - herself, Yuudachi-onee-san, Akebono-chan, and Kiyoshimo-chan, both before and after her modernization. From the perspective of pure ability and combat output potential, Shigure-onee-san is indeed a very attractive prospect for me to ask to join me in this mission. But would I want to risk the mental health of my sister which has already been so heavily damaged not just by our sister Kawakaze's death but also the fate that has befallen our former Admiral? And even though her Standalone Protocol is keeping her physical reactions to her volatile emotional state in check, knowing what she has done in the past, can I truly rely on her to keep her cool whilst on this mission?

Despite this, Yuubari-san implored me to ask Shigure-onee-san. She said that she has analyzed the overall potential battle efficacy of all the ship girls at Atsugi Naval Air Station, and she claims that besides Kiyoshimo, who is a modernized destroyer, Shigure-onee-san is the strongest destroyer at my disposal who can fit the requirements of my mission. Nobody else can even touch her or come close. Besides, she pointed out for me, another reason why I should take Shigure-onee-san with me is because just like me she, too, has a vested interest in this mission, should I let her know of it. Both of our ship sisters, Suzukaze and Kawakaze, have been sunk, and the goal of this mission is to secure a way for us to reconstruct them and bring them back to life. If Shigure-onee-san is tortured by their deaths, then naturally, she should be all for this mission, right? If I could just get this point across, that the two of us were on this mission specifically to revive our sisters, then there would be a realistically good chance that she would agree to this.

"I know that as ships, we're used to doing things for other people - well, namely humans," Yuubari-san told me, "but just this once, Samidare-chan, do this for your sisters. Don't worry about me, we'll hold things down here while you're gone."

So with reluctance tugging down on my heart, I followed Yuubari-san's advice and visited Shigure-onee-san during the evening after I was finished with Takahashi-san's officework, which there was only a little bit of tonight, thankfully. I wonder if that was a coincidence...

As usual, I found Shigure-onee-san in her dorm room alone. The past few days have calmed her down somewhat, judging by the fact that she looked up at me when I knocked on her door and told her I was coming in. Normally, if she were doing worse, she wouldn't even give me such a reaction, if any at all. I sat down with her on her bed and began to talk to her about the mission. I carefully explained the details of my mission profile, the timeline, the objective, and the rationale. I made it very clear that this mission's most important purpose was to reach our developers in America to work out a way to get everyone, including our ship sisters, reconstructed.

After I finished talking, Shigure-onee-san just looked down at her feet for a very long time. Some twenty minutes without so much as a response. At first I wondered if Shigure-onee-san was having trouble making up her mind, but after a few minutes I sensed that she was just deep in thought, not necessarily lost or indecisive. So I sat with her and held her hand while she took her time to give me a response. I added quietly that she didn't have to accept my request. If in the worst case scenario that I could not find anyone else suitable enough, I would simply undertake this mission alone.

"And leave you alone to die just like the others?"

That additional segment I spoke seemed to flip the motivation switch inside Shigure-onee-san. Yuubari-san ended up being right, but in a roundabout way - the thought of me sinking while carrying out a dangerous, risky mission all by myself was too painfully unacceptable to my older ship sister. The deaths of two of her ship sisters was unbearable enough, but that notion of me fighting and perhaps dying alone for the sake of our family was simply unfathomable. By that point, Shigure-onee-san whispered to me with self-hatred in her voice, she really wouldn't ever forgive herself. Shigure-onee-san then proceeded to take me in her arms and hug me tightly, and she pledged her assistance to me and my mission. The past few days she had spent in her room alone whenever she did not need to be present in drills and fleet practice, Shigure-onee-san really became acutely aware of the family that she did have here at Atsugi. She had been very close with Yuudachi-onee-san, and their separation a month ago had really hurt her, she revealed to me. And now that Suzukaze and Kawakaze were both dead, she was forced to realize that I was the only one left for her, and that she ought to treasure me as a fellow ship sister as much as she could, because I, too, could very well end up like our dead ship sisters with this mission.

The fact that she told me about the hurt she felt when Yuudachi-onee-san had been assigned to another naval base really caught me off guard, and I felt a few tears growing in my eyes when she confided this to me. The pain that I felt when Suzukaze died was one month in the making for Shigure-onee-san, and the empathy I felt made me feel guilty, too, that I did not see that pain in her sooner. Without really knowing why, I gave Shigure-onee-san a soft kiss on her forehead while hugging her too, saying that while I could not make any promises, I would do my best not to sink until this mission was complete. I don't know why I gave Shigure-onee-san that kiss; I wasn't really thinking straight because of all the personal things she'd told me. I suppose I figured that as a ship sister, it was my responsibility to comfort a sister in distress. After all, that is what siblings do, isn't it? But even still, it made me feel good, knowing that I was doing my best to comfort her. And Shigure-onee-san, too, gave me a rare smile.

At Shigure-onee-san's invitation, I will be spending the night with her in her room, so as soon as I am done writing this journal entry, I will head over her room. While I have been writing, I couldn't help but feel like this is all just so very surreal. Why is it that the pain that is not physical hurts so much more than pain that is? Why do I remember the pain in my heart more than I remember the pain that my brain feels? I'm sure that I have worded that very awkwardly, but I hope that my point stands. Losing a comrade or a ship sister in war used to be just a matter of fact; even if they sunk, we would still keep fighting. But now, it is all different. Having human bodies and human thoughts...it's so intriguing that it hurts. Literally. It is so much more difficult to be a ship girl that I sometimes cannot help but think that it would have been much simpler if we had simply been reconstructed as actual warships again. But every time I think this, I think about the warmth I felt whenever Teitoku embraced me. I think about the times when he put his hand on my head, praising me and thanking me for the work that I did. I think about the times when he kissed me and I kissed him, the joy and the passion that I felt in my chest. I think about the times when we slept together, and it never ceases to amaze me that someone like me, who used to be just a tool for war and destruction, could ever experience a day when I, too, could be made to know love and compassion and the warmth of another human being.

I'm sure that Shigure-onee-san has had thoughts like these of her own, but I want to make sure that tonight, she, too, becomes aware of my feelings. I want to show her the same kinds of emotions that Teitoku showed me. I want the two of us to be on the same page, so to speak, so that we both have the same basic purpose and reason to take on our task, a kind of motivation that is too clear to be confused in any way. The two of us, two ship sisters, fighting for the sake of our friends and ship sisters.

But please don't have any lewd thoughts about what I've written! I mean this all in a very sisterly, platonic way! I'm serious! Oohhh, I wish I could erase what I've written and write it over again so it doesn't sound so suggestive...but...but if Shigure-onee-san has such feelings for me, um...I don't know what to do! What should I do? I should have never thought of this...

No, actually, I'm lying. There _was_ that night...two nights before the attack...when both Shigure-onee-san and I...with Teitoku...

No, no no no! Bad Samidare! Bad bad bad!

Regardless, I love you, Teitoku. I just hope you don't read these embarrassing things I've written...

五月雨


	12. 六月九日（月）

**六月九日（月** **）**

I wish that I could have been Shigure-onee-san's roommate. Having spent the last night with her, I remembered again the familiar warmth of my fellow ship sister. And when I awoke this morning with my face nestled in the soft black locks of my older sister's hair, with the soothing warmth of her body that I held in my arms, I felt like I was enlightened somewhat, like I had a small epiphany. This was my fellow kin, my own blood underneath the skin of my beloved Shigure-onee-san flowing with life. Now whether biologically our blood and DNA are actually genetically related or whether our relationship as sisters is merely historic is not really a big concern for me. Experiencing the love and warmth and emotions from the man I love is one thing, but experiencing these same things from the girl I call my sister is somehow similar, yet somehow so different, different enough for me to notice and wonder.

Shigure-onee-san thanked me for spending the night with her. As I'd mentioned in yesterday's log, Shigure-onee-san had used these last few days thinking about all of her feelings that she had accumulated from everything she has experienced over the last six months, and she was tired of falling victim to her guilt. She told me that it was a trap that she has fallen into one too many times and wanted to redeem herself. After all, she said, wasn't that the point of her Kai upgrades? Her survivor's guilt was supposed to be kept under control by her Standalone Protocol, and she had put Teitoku through so much duress until her "glitch" was fixed by her Kai upgrades. By allowing herself to go through her usual cycle of guilt, Shigure-onee-san considered herself a pathetic fool, to use her own words who was wasting the deaths and the sacrifices made by our sunken ship sisters and Teitoku alike. While I tried to dissuade her from having such a mentality, saying that it was dangerous to have thoughts of such self-penance, Shigure-onee-san told me not to worry. She wouldn't let herself degrade to the point where she would also have me worry about her and suffer from her own suffering too.

"I've made you and everyone worry too much. The only way to correct things now is to do what needs to be done," she said. "Lieutenant Samidare-chan," she added just to tease me, which made me blush. That was the first time she'd ever called me Lieutenant, and I confessed to her that between the two of us, I didn't want her to call me that. We were sisters, not officer and soldier, and there was no need for us to behave in any other way.

Since today was Monday, we were flown back out to the Yokosuka Naval Yards, but because of the Abyssal attack last Thursday, we did not practice fleet exercises and drills. Instead, because base operations were well under way to repair the damages done to the harbor from the ambush, we were tasked to assist with the repair operations, and I, being the lieutenant ship girl, was assigned to oversee the manual labor of my fellow ship girls. Because I am very aware of the fact that there are a few ship girls who still resent my position as a rank and uniform ship girl, I made sure to participate in base repairs myself so that they cannot accuse me of abusing my position as a means to escape the menial labor that was expected of them. A large portion of our work was dedicated to freight: because of our enhanced strength, we carried out large pieces of rubble that couldn't be moved with the machinery present at base due to their sizes and placed them in neat piles around the base's perimeter where bigger construction vehicles like cranes and bulldozers will either break them up for easier removal or simply remove them as they are, but we also helped install new equipment aboard the three modern destroyer warships at the harbor that were there with us at the time of the ambush that had been ruined by the attack, and we also helped the base personnel clean up as much as we could do on our own. Some of the destroyers like Asashimo-chan grumbled that we were simply being used as a makeshift maid service crew, but most of us carried out our duties obediently. It shouldn't matter what our orders are, if we are helping our people and our country, that is enough of a reason for me. The men at the base expressed their sincerest gratitude to us for our assistance, as they had been waiting days ever since the attack to get lots of the heavy debris cleared away but hadn't received the proper moving equipment to do so.

During lunch break, I was paid a visit by Captain Hisakawa-dono, who insisted that I could simply address him as Hisakawa-san. He said that he eagerly wanted to talk to me about us ship girls, and I could tell that he was noticeably very nervous upon speaking to me. I tried to calm him down the best I could, saying that there was no reason to be nervous around me, that his nervousness was making me nervous as well. It turns out that when he first heard word about the existence of us ship girls, he immediately requested for a position transfer so that he himself may be in charge of one of the naval bases with ship girls stationed there, but he had been denied permission. He claimed that he wanted very much so to meet us, for there were rumors going about that there was a platoon of very beautiful girls who were supposed to be the embodiment of the Imperial-era warships. He explained that his deceased grandfather had served aboard the original IJN _Samidare_ , my past self, and that before he died, his grandfather had visited the JMSDF _Samidare_ , my modern counterpart docked here at Yokosuka. He said that it was a shame that he hadn't lived long enough to meet me, the resurrection of the same ship he had served aboard in his youth during the war. Although I can't seem to remember the names of all the crewmembers who served aboard me back in the war, only the names of my commanding officers, I'm sure that he was telling the truth. I expressed my condolences to him about his grandfather.

"I-If you'd like..." he said very quietly, and I could see him blushing very slightly. "...do you mind if, um, I take you...to my grandfather's grave?"

Although I did feel a little creeped out that this man was trying so hard to get my attention, as it seemed throughout our entire conversation, at the same time I couldn't simply say no. I didn't want to think that he was lying about his grandfather being a sailor who served aboard me during the war, and should he really be telling the truth, denying his request would come off as just such a rude denial. So just to be safe, I said that I would most certainly try my best to some day take up his offer and go to visit his late grandfather's grave to pay my respects, but when that time should come was the more pressing question. He asked me if I had any plans or restrictions and said that as a Captain, he would do his best to submit a recommendation to the Navy committee to allow me a weekend's absence so that we could travel to his grandfather's grave. I said that I would be very busy very soon and that I didn't know exactly when I had some free time to myself, and that he didn't need to do anything for me because it would be unlikely for him to be able to do anything for me in the first place, me being a ship girl and thus part of a highly classified naval unit within the Kaijou Jietai. It was unlikely that a standard-issue officer in the Navy would be able to affect the branches of command enough to influence my directives at Atsugi Naval Air Station.

When I saw Hisakawa-san look discouraged, I tried to cheer him up, saying that eventually I would be able to visit his grandfather's grave, surely. We just needed some time to organize our plans, that's all.

When he finally left, Shigure-onee-san and Kiyoshimo-chan, who had been sitting with me for lunch, both asked me who that man was. I explained to them that he was the commanding officer of the JMSDF _Samidare._ Kiyoshimo-chan nodded in understanding, but Shigure-onee-san was not smiling at all. She advised me to stay clear of that man if I could. She revealed that she had been keeping an eye on him when she first noticed him watching me in our naval exercises at the Yokosuka Harbor and thought his behavior suspicious. Today, now that he has taken the initiative and approached me on his own, Shigure-onee-san feels that I am the target of his infatuation, and therefore, his whole story about his grandfather being a former sailor aboard me back in the war could very well be a mere fabrication that he made up just so that he could lure me into his grasp. While I can't deny that I think Hisakawa-san is trying to get a little _too_ familiar with me, I don't think he's going to go _that_ far, that Shigure-onee-san was just overreacting to his meekness around me. Surely he was only acting that way because he perhaps liked me and was nervous around me because of it.

Akiyama-san and Takahashi-san flew in as we were wrapping up our maintenance work at the base and were preparing to leave around 1700 hours. Akiyama-san requested that I stay behind at Yokosuka for another night so that we could discuss business privately together, just the three of us. He had received word from Takahashi-san about the plans he was making for me to embark on my secret mission, and therefore he wanted to learn of it to give it his clandestine support. Takahashi-san gave him the itinerary of my secret mission and its objectives, and Akiyama-san agreed to it, saying that this mission, should it prove successful, may very well give us the technology we need to maintain and reconstruct the ship girls who had been sunk in action much faster than the teams of scientists, doctors, and engineers now working around the clock to study, understand, and reverse-engineer our physiology. Admiral Fujioka would most likely object heavily to this should he find out, Akiyama-san mentioned quite bitterly, but he, too, thought this necessary.

I asked Takahashi-san if it was alright for me to take my ship sister Shigure-onee-san with me on my mission. She was, after me, the most experienced ship girl, and therefore was the most qualified to escort me across the Pacific. Takahashi-san deliberated on this for a long time. He said that on one hand, while my points were quite valid, he had plans to make Shigure-onee-san the next commanding ship girl after me in my absence. In fact, to prepare for my absence, he had even been putting in a recommendation to Akiyama-san for Shigure-onee-san to receive rank and uniform, too, just like me, and become a lieutenant to cement her authority as a veteran ship girl. While on the inside I was extremely overjoyed that they were considering this quite heavily, by the the sounds of it, I then felt quite bad knowing that now, if I am to take my ship sister with me on this journey, she cannot attain her rank and uniform. Now I'm not so sure if I want to take her, because I really want her to find success like I have. But upon thinking more about it later this evening, I figured that if I were to talk about this with Shigure-onee-san, she would seem like the type to refuse it in favor of escorting me on my mission. I don't know...but anyway, Takahashi-san, in the end, decided to allow me to take Shigure-onee-san with me.

Since it was getting late, Akiyama-san suggested that I simply spend the night here. Takahashi-san and he had to take care of some more business here at Yokosuka, so I spent the rest of the evening until now walking about on the deck of the JMSDF _Samidare_. For some reason that I have yet to come up with a proper explanation for, I feel as though I have a special place for me on this ship. Is it only because we share the same name? I'm not sure. But walking about on the deck and sitting on the side railings watching the moon hang in the air beautifully over the calm harbor waters is amazingly majestic and peaceful. I can't wait to go back to base and write about all of this in my journal.

I love you, Teitoku. I just only wish that you were here, sitting beside me with your arm around my shoulders, watching the moonlight together.

五月雨


	13. 六月十日（火）

**六月十日（** **火）**

 **Harusame-onee-san.** **Harusame-onee-san** **came back to me last night.**

Even now as I am writing, I cannot believe what I have seen or done this previous night. When I was still sitting on the railing of the modernized warship _Samidare_ , I detected a foreign and hostile signature entering the bay. It had been masked to obscure the presence, but I suppose my upgraded sensors was still able to detect it. And when I sailed out to investigate it, that same Harusame-onee-santhat appeared so different, so sickly, even, I saw floating above the water underneath the bright full moon in the evening sky.

Without thinking, I boosted over to her to greet her. While she was armed, she did not have her weapons ready, meaning that for whatever reason she was here, she was not here to pick a fight. Plus, she was all alone. She had no escort, no fellow Abyssal comrades to support her, nobody. For me, I just wanted to make sure that this was the same Harusame-onee-san whom we thought we'd lost at the ambush attack at Okinawa. And sure enough, it was.

There can be no mistaking her physique. As we greeted each other in silence, not knowing what to say to each other, I took a good look at her body. The changes that had been done to her were drastic, yes, much like the changes that had been done to Yuudachi-onee-san and Kitakami-san when they, too, were captured by the Abyssals. The signature pale skin of the Abyssals, the odd alien-like headgear and dark uniform that indicates the mark of an Abyssal. But there could be no doubt that this was Harusame-onee-san. Her face, her voice...they had remained unchanged.

Harusame-onee-san, in our first minute of our meeting, did not react at all, besides lowering her head. I did not know what she was thinking at the time, but it seemed to me like she did not know what to do or say. At first, I thought that she was acting apologetic that she had let herself be captured by the enemy, and that she was returning to apologize at great risk to herself. So I could not help myself but to throw myself at her and embrace her as hard as I could. I knew that by doing this, I could have incurred a lethal, if not fatal, consequence unto myself. This could have very well been a trap that I was falling for. Harusame-onee-san could have shot me while I had let my guard down, perhaps injured me greatly or even killed me. But at the time, I couldn't have cared less. I wanted to hug my older ship sister. I wanted to express my love for her, which I felt I hadn't shown enough of to her during our time at Okinawa. I felt in some sense guilty, like Shigure-onee-san, that we had not been able to spend more time together, and even more guilty that Harusame-onee-san had to be the one who had to suffer the misfortune of falling into the hands of the enemy and unable to be rescued by circumstance. I knew that there would be a chance that Harusame-onee-san may not even recognize me, or may react badly to my act. Anything could have gone wrong.

But she did nothing. My lurking suspicions that Harusame-onee-san still remembers something about us, despite her Abyssalization, proved correct. She _had_ run away from the Abyssal attack that she led herself for a reason, she _had_ run away after looking us in the eye for a reason.

I recorded my conversation with Harusame-onee-san carefully. We could only talk for a brief time, for the night patrol boats in the harbor were going to discover us, and should we have been seen together, there may be grave misunderstandings that I was somehow in collaboration with the Abyssals, which Harusame-onee-san did not want.

"Are you...my sister?" were the first words that she spoke to me after I had let go of her from my hug. By this point, I was in tears, shaken by her sudden return, but I managed to calm myself in order to speak to her. She didn't say "who are you?", but instead, "are you my sister?", implying that while her memory had been tampered with, she still retained parts of it from before she must have become Abyssalized. I told her yes, I was her ship sister, Samidare. She was the fifth Shiratsuyu-Class destroyer, while I was the sixth, making her my direct older sister. She had an expression of silent horror, like she was starting to remember things that she did not want to remember.

"My name...is Harusame?" she asked. I nodded to her. When I asked her what she was called now by her Abyssal comrades, she said that she was called "Destroyer Princess". She did not know that she had another name, but all these names that I was telling her, she felt as though she remembered them, as if she was remembering something from a dream.

"I have come back...hoping to figure out, um...who I once was," she explained. "I...was hoping to see you. You...and...the other one..."

She must have been referring to Shigure-onee-san, and when I put the name across her, Harusame-onee-san had the same reaction.

So I tried my best to explain to her who she really was. She was one of us, the ship girls, who fought with us and served with us at Okinawa. A little over a month ago, the Abyssals had attacked our base there, and she had been reported missing in action. We had all worried about her and tried to reason out why and how she had gone missing, but nobody knew. Most of us had simply considered her to be dead, that her body must have sunk into the sea and drifted away with the currents, but searches of the waters around the base yielded no such results to prove it. It had been suggested that Harusame-onee-san had been captured, but of course we could not prove this unless we saw Harusame-onee-san Abyssalized ourselves, which, as we clearly know now, proves to be the case. For security reasons, I refrained from divulging details about our current military operations to her, but I gave her the basic knowledge that our fleet at Okinawa had been split up to train the other ship girls who hadn't been deployed yet in other naval bases around the country.

Harusame-onee-san began to look very disturbed as I summarized our activities over the past month. I feel as though she was starting to feel that somehow, all of this was her own fault, and I even told her not to feel personally responsible for all this, but she did not respond. Instead, she mentioned that her comrades who battled us here last week had informed her that they had managed to sink a few ship girls before withdrawing.

"Who...were they?"

I found that very difficult to answer, but eventually I told her. And when I mentioned that Kawakaze and Suzukaze were among those killed in action, Harusame-onee-san whispered,

"...your sisters...?"

"Your"...sisters?

No, no, no. I corrected Harusame-onee-san, these were _our_ sisters. Not _my_ sisters, _ours_.

But Harusame-onee-san shook her head. It was at this point she, too, started to cry.

"Forget about me," she said. "I have...caused you all too much grief. I don't even...think of you as my siblings, not because...I don't _want_ to, but...because I _can't_. It's just better if you...forget about me. It's just better if you...sink me, the next time...we meet, so that I...stop...making you all so sad. Two of you...are already dead. Please don't...let me do any more."

I blatantly refused. I refused to honor my older sister's words. I cannot bring myself to do such things that I know will just make all of us suffer without any hope for reconciliation and recovery. By "letting go" of Harusame-onee-san, I would only cause everyone involved more suffering, and I don't want to do that. Instead, I asked Harusame-onee-san that if she wanted to be with us again.

"I...I don't know...! Just what kind of an older sister am I, if...I don't even feel like you're my sister anymore? Even if...even if we really were sisters before, I...I can't still be your sister now."

And then I asked her why she couldn't feel this way. What was making her feel that we couldn't be sisters? I reminded her that no matter how many things had been done to her, facts were facts: nothing could change the fact that we were both part of the same class of destroyers, and therefore sisters.

"Because...the Abyssals...they are my family now."

This left me in silence. At first, I wanted to reject that. There could be no way that Harusame-onee-san, my older ship sister, truly felt this way. I did not want to accept this. But consider everything that I have heard from Harusame-onee-san herself. Unless she is acting under some kind of strong behavioral codex that forces her to act in this way to put up an elaborate trap for me, I feel that she is telling the truth, and I am willing to trust her as her sister, even if she doesn't consider the two of us as such. And if I put myself into her shoes, I start to see that Harusame-onee-san does not have much of a choice. The ones she has been spending the most time with have been the Abyssals, given her Abyssalization. They have been taking care of her in our absence. And for her to say that they are now her new family, their lives must not be so different from ours for her to say that. Maybe she is just being forced to say this, but I'm not sure if that is really the case.

But despite being able to sympathize with her circumstances, I am not the type of girl to simply let my own ship sister be taken away by another group of people, much less a group of people who are our enemy and have attacked us and our country. Perhaps there is a chance that the Abyssals may be a kind, compassionate species, but I cannot sacrifice the happiness of me and my sisters for the sake of theirs.

I pleaded with Harusame-onee-san to come back to us. No matter what her feelings may be for the Abyssals, I wanted her to come back to us, the ship girls. This was not about us being the good guys and the Abyssals being the bad guys. This was not about us being better than them, or portraying us as being superior. No - this was about Harusame-onee-san returning to the rightful family that she needed to be with. She did not deserve to be put into another family on the basis of capture. I asked her if she felt particularly happy about her situation being with the Abyssals, and Harusame-onee-san couldn't answer. She said she did not know.

So I decided to take a risk. I informed Harusame-onee-san that Shigure-onee-san and I were soon going to embark on a secret mission, just the two of us, to the West Coast of America. I did not tell her the details of our mission yet. I told her that I wanted her to meet us there and if it was possible for her to do so alone. She shook her head.

"My friends...they, they...um...don't trust me. I'm...not even supposed to be here. When I go back...they will surely ask me what I have been doing, why...why I'd gone missing. If...if I try to leave them again...they either will not let me, or...or they will follow me to keep an eye on me."

Thinking quickly, I asked Harusame-onee-san to tell her Abyssal friends that she was here tonight at the Yokosuka Naval Yards to perform some secret reconnaissance and to let them know that she'd learned of this secret mission that I was telling her via intercepted radio transmissions. I told her our itinerary, our estimated coordinates of deployment, the date - because I do not know when we will be deploying exactly, I said in three days in the morning. I told her that if she would willing to follow us to America, our developers, the people who had built her, would be able to turn her back to normal. If Harusame-onee-san wanted to figure out her past self, her true identity as Harusame-onee-san and not Destroyer Princess, then she should absolutely come with us.

"...why...are you doing this for me?" she asked. "This will...get you into a lot of trouble. I'm already...going to be in a lot of trouble. You...you shouldn't...do this to yourself, too."

I picked up her hand and looked her straight in the eye. The same feeling that made me hug Shigure-onee-san tightly as we slept together in her bed fueled me to tell her that I had made up my mind that I would do everything I could to fight for my sisters...my family. Harusame-onee-san was part of my family. And no matter what other families she may be a part of, I was going to fight to preserve my own. Her disappearance at Okinawa was a mistake, our mistake. Letting her become captured and converted into an Abyssal was a downright shame for all of us. But because there is a way to revert this, to make her better again, I was going to fight to the death if necessary to make things right. Besides, I was already putting myself and Shigure-onee-san at grave danger by undertaking this secret mission that I told her about for the sake of reconstructing Suzukaze and Kawakaze - if we could bring Harusame-onee-san on board too, then why not?

"Please trust me," I begged her. I held her hand with both of my own.

She eventually nodded her head. She was crying, but silently. The patrol boats were about to come in range to detect us, so I urged her to escape. But before she did, she hugged me back quickly and sailed away.

As for the rest of the day, I oversaw some last few logistics tasks for the base and flew back to Atsugi Naval Air Station late at night. We will discuss the details of the mission profile tomorrow morning.

I love you, Teitoku. Please watch over me...and I pray that Harusame-onee-san will come back to us.

五月雨


	14. 六月十一日（水）

**六月十一日（水** **）**

Today, Shigure-onee-san and I met with Takahashi-san and Akiyama-san, who stayed the night here at base with us, in the morning, being exempted from our usual morning routines.

Takahashi-san has procured for us the use of one of the helicopters here at Atsugi Naval Air Station with the authority of Chief of Maritime Staff Akiyama-san, and it will deliver us to the ocean over Chiba, fifty kilometers into the sea. With our intelligence of the secret base run by our developers of Seal Team Six, Shigure-onee-san and I shall proceed to sail across the Pacific Ocean and reach said base and make contact with our developers by any means necessary. Once we establish communications with them, we are to explain to them our situation and procure a way to repair our fallen sisters. Akiyama-san emphasized heavily that we are to stay there until the developers could guarantee us their reconstruction. I don't think they would refuse, but if they did, I would not plan to leave anyway until they promised they could revive Suzukaze and Kawakaze and everyone else. After this objective is completed, we were to return to Yokosuka Naval Yards and ask to speak to Colonel Zantetsu, who will then fly us back to Atsugi Naval Air Station so that we may report our success...or failure.

Since I already knew most of the mission profile, this was really meant to have Shigure-onee-san all caught up. Once Shigure-onee-san understood everything that was being told to us so far, Takahashi-san said that our mission would begin promptly tomorrow morning.

This was where I stepped in to interrupt to reveal my secret. I asked Takahashi-san and Akiyama-san for permission to change the start of our mission timeline. Naturally, the Admirals were perplexed and asked for an explanation. Why did I want to change our departure schedule? I had even asked before to embark on this mission as soon as possible, and now I was requesting to delay it. Why?

I asked everyone - Shigure-onee-san, Takahashi-san, and Akiyama-san - to keep what I was about to tell them a secret from everyone else. They could not tell anyone else, and that they would have to trust me on my word (I shared my memory files with Shigure-onee-san in order to legitimize my claims, but there was a chance that the Admirals would not believe me anyway because Shigure-onee-san is my sister, and that she would simply play along for my sake). Once I received their assurance, I revealed to them my secret and unexpected meeting with Harusame-onee-san.

I recounted how two nights ago, while sitting on the deck of the JMSDF _Samidare_ watching the ocean and the moon, I sensed an unfamiliar signature approaching the harbor, and becoming suspicious of it, I investigated it and discovered Harusame-onee-san. At the mention of our missing ship sister, understandably, Shigure-onee-san reacted the quickest. She grabbed me by my shoulders and asked me if I was telling the truth, and I shared my memories with her to prove it. Takahashi-san recognized the name, apparently, asking me if that was the name of the sole ship girl who wound up missing from the Abyssal's surprise attack on our base at Okinawa, and I said that it was. I explained to them that Harusame-onee-san had in fact been captured somehow by the Abyssals during that attack over a month ago and was turned into an Abyssal ship girl. This struck fear into the Admirals, as I could tell by their reactions on their faces. Akiyama-san, with his fingers on his forehead in quiet frustration, deplored this newfound truth, asking the rhetorical question of what the purpose of us ship girls fighting was if we could be "zombiefied", to put it bluntly, by the enemies we fought and be used to fight back against their former friends and allies.

To be clear, I reinformed them that such an occurrence in Harusame-onee-san did have a precedent, as seen in our attacks against the Abyssal bases at Sector B, when several of our ship girls were captured by Abyssals when the Re-Class whom we had captured ourselves destroyed the helicopter that was transporting them all over to the developers' base in California and brought the ship girls to their base and turned them into Abyssals. The Admirals did not know about this, since this all happened outside of Operation Rising Sun, so they were somewhat relieved to know that our developers have the knowledge to revert Abyssalized ship girls back to normal. Even still, Akiyama-san said that they would have to deploy us ship girls much more carefully to minimize any chance of any of us falling into Abyssal hands, because that would mean that the intelligence carried by any captured ship girls would be at grave risk to be accessed by the Abyssals. And if they know what we know, Japan as a whole could be in great danger. Considering that there have been several ship girls who have been Abyssalized (at one point) already, Akiyama-san remarked that it's a miracle that there have only been two attacks so far, and he wondered aloud why more attacks hadn't been made. Takahashi-san pointed out that this could be due to the fact that we ship girls who had been deployed to Okinawa had possessed no current knowledge about Japanese naval bases due to the natures of our deployments.

In any case, Takahashi-san brought us back to my main point: so I had accidentally rendezvoused with our missing ship sister, whom I had discovered the other night to be Abyssalized; what was my point? I informed him that in the short few moments I had spent with her, I learned that Harusame-onee-san had still managed to retain some of her conscience from before her Abyssalization, from when she was just a normal ship girl like us. In comparison, the other ship girls who had been Abyssalized showed none of their former personalities when we battled them at Dog District. In addition, Harusame-onee-san, because she still had parts of her old conscience, had come back to Yokosuka on her own accord in hopes of meeting me or Shigure-onee-san, and by chance, I had been there to receive her. I said that Harusame-onee-san had wanted to confirm to herself that she did in fact have a previous life, one before her Abyssalization. And because of the nature of our mission to make contact with our developers, who know how to turn an Abyssalized ship girl back to normal, I stated my intention of having Harusame-onee-san accompany us to California.

This put Takahashi-san and Akiyama-san in a very tight spot; clearly, they understood the great risks and benefits that my plan encompassed. Takahashi-san asked me, now that they knew all of this, by how many days I wanted to push back the start of our mission timeline, and I said that I wanted to begin on Friday, instead of Thursday. I said that I had given Harusame-onee-san instructions on how to reach us back on Monday night.

That's when I realized my mistake, and Akiyama-san was kind enough to point it out to me. It turns out that I calculated my dates wrong - the original date of departure and the day that I had told Harusame-onee-san to meet me turned out to be the exact same.

I feel so stupid. As a ship girl, I shouldn't be making such silly mistakes.

So we didn't even have to change the original launch date. But even still, my intel on our missing ship sister not only got Takahashi-san and Akiyama-san more invested into this mission, but it also made Shigure-onee-san even more motivated to embark with us on this mission. I think it is now safe to say that for the two of this, this mission has just become the most important mission of our lives. The mission to bring back our fallen ship sisters...dead, and turned.

To wrap up our meeting, Akiyama-san then took our conversation in a different but necessary direction. He informed us that by now, the entire country came to know about the Abyssal attack on Yokosuka; it is now safe to say that the Abyssal threat is no longer a secret. Now that I think about it, our success at Sector B with Operatin Rising Sun seems less and less a victory and more and more an increasing failure. What is the English reference? A..."Pandora's Box"...? I feel as though by defeating the Abyssals in their home sector, we had inadvertently freed them from their isolation there and set them loose onto the entire world. Of course, we only know about the Abyssals operating somewhere around Japan, as the last attack on the naval yards suggests. But there could be more...many more. And they could be...anywhere. Therefore, our mission is to be conducted in absolute secrecy, because nobody knows if it's a good time to publicly reveal our existences as ship girls. For now, the government is trying its best to convince its people that its conventional military is enough to keep the Abyssals at bay - to be fair, the Abyssals have not yet attacked any civilian location, only military points of interest. But it could only be a matter of time, and Akiyama-san is deliberating on what to do.

Shigure-onee-san spent much of the evening rewatching my memory of meeting with Harusame-onee-san. When I spent some time with her in her room, she said that she couldn't believe that Harusame-onee-san looked so different. She was again on the verge of tears because before our arrival at Atsugi, before we were attacked at Okinawa, Shigure-onee-san did not really pay too much attention to Harusame-onee-san; they did not have the level of sistership that Shigure-onee-san had with, say, Yuudachi-onee-san. This was a resurgence of the feelings of guilt that she felt when Kawakaze and Suzukaze died, and Shigure-onee-san relapsed slightly back into those feelings when she realized what Harusame-onee-san had become. Granted, it could have been a lot worse, since Harusame-onee-san did not turn into something like Kitakami-san or Yuudachi-onee-san had become - without their memories and without their original personalities. So she turned to me and promised me that she would do the same for Harusame-onee-san. Now that this opportunity has presented itself, Shigure-onee-san would not let this chance go. We would perhaps never get this chance again.

"We _must_ save her," Shigure-onee-san said. "We don't have a choice."

While this made me very happy that Shigure-onee-san cares so much about Harusame-onee-san, I also grew apprehensive. I was frank with Shigure-onee-san - what if we found ourselves in a situation such that the Abyssals had caught up to us and were attacking us, and we needed to make a choice between abandoning Harusame-onee-san to the Abyssals again for the sake of our mission, or stand our ground (or water, whichever) and defend Harusame-onee-san?

"Both. We defend Harusame, and then we take her to California."

But of course it couldn't be _that_ easy, otherwise I wouldn't even bother asking this question. So assuming that we _absolutely needed_ to make one choice, which would it be?

"I don't want to answer that, Samidare. I don't...I just don't..."

I ended it there. I don't want to trouble my older sister anymore. Even though I would rather know the answer to my important question, I think I already know what Shigure-onee-san would do anyway. I just held her as we sat together on her bed until she calmed down enough to go to sleep.

This is a mission we _cannot_ fail. Because...if we do...

Please watch over us, Teitoku. I love you.

五月雨


	15. 六月十二日（木）

**六月十二日（木）**

Disaster has struck already. For the sake of recording the events of our secret operation, in the event that all three of us sink and our bodies are somehow recovered, I am typing this log in my main processing unit and saving it in the deepest core files that I currently have access to that are not locked by administrative privileges. I will write this down on paper as soon as I am able.

Our preparations went flawlessly at the start of the day. Both Shigure-onee-san and I awoke at 0430 hours sharp and took half an hour to prepare. We equipped ourselves with our gearboxes that contain our weaponry and a full supply of ammunition. Shigure-onee-san also brought the Beowulf assault rifle that she received as part of her Kai 2 upgrade, and we received permission from Takahashi-san to request some personal gear items from the armory at Atsugi Naval Air Station, such as utility belts that hold pouches and small packs that serve to contain emergency supplies such as small food ration packets, cans of fuel, bauxite bars, and steel patches. The amounts that we stocked ourselves with is little bit more than what we would normally supply ourselves with for a single mission, but because we initially expected our timeline to last two days, it wasn't quite enough to cover the entire time, but if we carried any more, the supplies would prove to be an impediment. So we drank as much fuel as we could, topping ourselves off at nearly 110% maximum fuel capacity - any more than that and we would have started to feel nauseated.

As scheduled, at 0500 hours sharp, we departed straight from Atsugi Naval Air Station by helicopter, and we base jumped out of it fifty kilometers southeast of Chiba, at the precise coordinates that I had given to Harusame-onee-san days before.

To my great relief, Harusame-onee-san really did keep her end of our promise and met us at our rendezvous point. In fact, Shigure-onee-san, whose sensors and radar are more powerful than mine due to her Kai 2, detected her much earlier than I did and alerted me to her presence in the area, thinking that there was an Abyssal ambush waiting for us at our deployment point. I had to remind her that it was most likely Harusame-onee-san who was there to meet us, since there was only one Abyssal signature there when we arrived.

At first, Harusame-onee-san was extremely frightened by the sight of Shigure-onee-san when we all convened for the first time. On the other hand, Shigure-onee-san herself was positively devastated by poor Harusame-onee-san's new appearance post-Abyssalization, but at least she was able to prepare herself beforehand by looking over the memory files that I transferred to her the day before. Harusame-onee-san tried to hide behind me from Shigure-onee-san - it appeared that she follows her Abyssal instincts more than her human ones, if there can be any distinction to be made between the two in the first place. After much coaxing, I finally convinced Harusame-onee-san to let Shigure-onee-san embrace her at least once, and she finally relented. When she did get hugged, Harusame-onee-san sounded like she was super afraid of being eaten. When I asked her why she thought Shigure-onee-san was so scary, Harusame-onee-san admitted that she sensed our eldest ship sister to be an extremely dangerous and potent enemy of hers.

"You are...too strong," Harusame-onee-san even whispered to Shigure-onee-san. "You cannot be called a destroyer...with all that power."

Perhaps that was part of the reason why Harusame-onee-san had simply turned and run away during the Abyssal ambush last week when she rested her eyes on us at the harbor. Because it seems like she can directly gauge other ship girls' combat abilities from afar, Harusame-onee-san had deemed Shigure-onee-san too tough an opponent to fight. Harusame-onee-san herself didn't say anything about this - rather, she did not want to comment on that incident, but that was what I took away from it.

Harusame-onee-san also was slow to accept Shigure-onee-san's feelings when Shigure-onee-san promised to protect her from the Abyssals, that the two of us, she and I, wouldn't let the Abyssals hurt her anymore. Harusame-onee-san didn't look comfortable hearing this. In fact, she actually looked very sad. I tried to question her about it, but she simply shook her head and said that she would do her best. From there, we departed from Chiba and began our journey for San Pedro, California.

I asked Harusame-onee-san to cooperate with us and tell us the positions of all the Abyssal forces currently stationed near or around Japan. She stated that there were presently two fleets of Abyssals sailing around the coastline of Japan in search of the military bases that might house ship girls like us: one should be somewhere around the northwest coast, perhaps somewhere around Niigata. The other fleet was the one she belonged to, which had been investigating the southern half of the Japanese coastline and had discovered the Yokosuka Naval Yards and believed it to be an important base for us ship girls. (In a sense, they weren't wrong.) Her fleet was the one to attack us at the naval yards. Besides these two fleets, there were no other Abyssal groups that she had been made aware of. There was a small chance that there could be more, but Harusame-onee-san said that she was considered a high-ranking Abyssal in her own fleet, despite her relative youth compared to other Abyssals there, because of her special designation as "Destroyer Princess", or Destroyer Hime.

When I asked her to tell us more, Harusame-onee-san didn't want to. She said that she already felt so bad about betraying her friends and comrades back in her Abyssal fleet by defecting to us and accompanying us to California in hopes of becoming reverted back to a normal ship girl; therefore, she wasn't willing to sell out the Abyssals she knew quite well in her quest to find out who she was. Shigure-onee-san asked her why she would think this. Harusame-onee-san had been taken against her will and forced to become assimilated into the enemy fleet, the Abyssals. She had been mind-controlled and absorbed into their ranks to fight against her own comrades, her own ship sisters like us. How could she consider them friends?

I had to point out to Shigure-onee-san that it couldn't possibly be Harusame-onee-san's own fault for thinking the way she does. For one, if she truly had been mind-controlled, she wouldn't even be here with us sailing to America in the first place. The fact that she even remembered us at all is proof that what Harusame-onee-san had undergone in her Abyssalization process, whatever it might have been, was not mind-control. Perhaps Kitakami-san and Yuudachi-onee-san had been mind-controlled when they themselves were captured by the Abyssals, but not so in Harusame-onee-san's case, for whatever reason. More likely, Harusame-onee-san had been subjected to some kind of memory wipe, or more accurately, a memory _rewrite_ or _transplantation._ In this sense, it is understandable that Harusame-onee-san now considers her Abyssal comrades to be friends, because when she had been activated two weeks ago, as she claims to have been, she must have only had access to cleared parts of her memory bank that gave her the illusion that she had been born anew instead of being reborn from another identity, and she only began to gain access to the rest of her memory as events unfolded.

In other words, nobody could be put to blame for the fact that Harusame-onee-san wants to protect the friends she's made in the Abyssal fleet. And the way that Harusame-onee-san described them, they actually seem to be quite nice people. Except for the Re-Class...even Harusame-onee-san seems to agree that the Re-Class is extremely dangerous, judging by her tone when she talked about her. But the Abyssals seem like very kind people outside of fighting us. Harusame-onee-san truly wanted us to believe her when she said that the Abyssals are like family to her, and that if possible, she doesn't want to have to fight any of them.

Shigure-onee-san didn't want to hear any of it. The Abyssals are our enemy; she had seen firsthand what the Abyssals did to Yuudachi-onee-san. They had destroyed our home in Okinawa and forced us all to be dispersed; worst of all, they nearly killed Teitoku. Shigure-onee-san said that while she was sorry for Harusame-onee-san's circumstances, she would not hesitate to kill all the Abyssals we faced. This was war, and there could be only one winner. And Shigure-onee-san sure didn't want herself or anyone she cared about to be the loser.

I feel a bit different about it. I am nowhere near as gung-ho about fighting as Shigure-onee-san. In fact, if I was told that we could put an end to this war by simply making peace with the Abyssals, I would be glad to settle for that as well. Because I trust Harusame-onee-san, even in her Abyssalized form, I must also trust her word, her word that the Abyssals are actually people with whom we can get along. They are not inherently evil, though this can only be taken to a certain extent, admittedly. But I kept this opinion to myself. I didn't want to anger Shigure-onee-san so early into our mission.

About nineteen hours into our mission, at the North Pacific Ocean, at the coordinates 43.993767, 167.452060, we were attacked. Harusame-onee-san detected them first: a triple-pronged attack from our north, southwest, and southeast flanks. We don't know exactly how we became detected; Harusame-onee-san now believes that we might have been detected early into our voyage and that this was another ambush attack set up by Abyssal forces lying in wait for us in the North Pacific, perhaps coming down from the Aleutian Islands. Either this, or they might have tracked us down by using her as a reference point, but if they did, it is a mystery as to why they decided to attack us in the middle of the North Pacific. Either way, in total, some four Ri-Class heavy cruisers, three Chi-Class torpedo cruisers, and twenty-four Abyssal destroyers of differing classes engaged us in battle. Harusame-onee-san at first did not fight, afraid to hurt her Abyssal brethren, but when it became clear that only Shigure-onee-san and I could not fight all them off alone, she finally aided us. After the battle, she admitted that she did not want to alienate them, and by attacking them, she truly would be deemed a traitor, no better than us ship girls, perhaps even worse, since she doubts she can be re-Abyssalized.

What made Harusame-onee-san finally fight was Shigure-onee-san's sacrifice. I had made one too many risky maneuvers and attacks, because I was slowly beginning to panic. I know how to fight as part of a larger fleet; however, it was only today that I learned that I am almost clueless when it comes to fighting in a very small unit. Yes, true, Shigure-onee-san, Harusame-onee-san, and I may all be stronger than the average destroyer, but individual power meant nothing when the enemy not only outnumbered us but also coordinated their attacks to damage us more and more. Eventually, I made the blunder of chasing after a small pack of destroyers before realizing that they were intentionally drawing me away from my sisters because I wanted to finish them off with a shell, and I found myself in the crossfire between two of the Ri-Class. Shigure-onee-san saw me and managed to boost her way to me to push me out of the way, but in doing so she had to make a reckless dive at me, and as she was trying to get back to her feet, the Abyssal destroyers pounced on her, hitting her with numerous 5-inch shells and even biting her fiercely and leaving deep bite marks on her arms and legs and tear marks on her belly. Her gearbox even got scratched up too. Shigure-onee-san finally had to use her Standalone Protocol to chase the rest of them away, but because of the wounds she sustained up until that point, she is now very weakened by the backlash that her protocol has imposed on her for using it in such a compromised state. I used most of my own supplies to patch her up as much as I can, but Shigure-onee-san is still moderately damaged, and I begged Shigure-onee-san not to use her protocol again. It scared me and Harusame-onee-san to just look at her while she was in that terrifying state, standing on the water, drenched with both her own blood and the blood of the enemy, with that cruel smile that thrives on death on her face.

Right now, I am carrying Shigure-onee-san on my back. Harusame-onee-san is carrying my gearbox for me so that I can carry our eldest sister, and this way, we are continuing to sail for California without sleeping. Our mission timeline parameters to reach California was _supposed_ to be a maximum of two full days, maybe two and half depending on how smoothly our voyage turned out to be, given our maximum cruising speed and our small backup supplies of fuel to help keep us going. But now, it looks as if we will reach it in two more days at the slowed pace that we are going, due to me carrying Shigure-onee-san on my back to let her sleep to recover a little bit of her health and stamina. This would bring our total time taken to reach our objective to three days, but I fear that this is not the end.

I will only be thankful that we even reach our destination in one piece each ourselves.

I'm scared, Teitoku. I'm in the middle of the ocean, with no one else but my older sisters to rely on, one of whom I am carrying on my back because she is hurt. I have nowhere to go to stop for supplies along the way, no way to contact anyone else in case we are in dire trouble, and prone to yet more attacks in the near future at any moment, from anywhere. I'm so scared that we won't make it.

My wounds hurt. The cold water of the North Pacific do nothing to help soothe the pain; in fact, it's making it hurt more. I'm hungry, I'm thirsty, and my arms and back hurt from all these hours of carrying Shigure-onee-san.

I don't know if I can have faith...that we can complete our mission. I can feel Shigure-onee-san's warm blood seeping into my uniform through my back...and it is not the kind of warmth I want to feel.

If...if we don't make it...Shigure-onee-san, Harusame-onee-san, I want you two to know that...that I'm sorry. If we fail, this is all my fault. I would much rather have all of us alive...than sunken at the bottom of this dark sea.

And Teitoku, if I can't see you again, I...want you to know that...that I've failed to be the ship girl that you deserve after your months of dedicated training. I will continue to do my best, but if the worst comes to pass, I...

I want you to know that I loved you, and that I...tried my very best...even though I probably...wasn't the most qualified to receive your affection.

Takahashi-san, Akiyama-san...

Shiratsuyu-onee-san, Murasame-onee-san, Yuudachi-onee-san, Umikaze, Yamakaze, Kawakaze, Suzukaze...

I will never forget you all.

五月雨


	16. 六月十三日（金）

We're surrounded.

They've...found us.

So many...

I wonder where...they all came from.

How they found us.

We...can't win.

They baited us...into a trap...manipulated our movements.

We were supposed to...reach Hawaii as...an emergency harbor. Use it as...a safe haven, for there is an American force...there.

Instead, they blocked us, our advance...and instead...forced us further north, away...from Hawaii.

We...were bombarded from all sides...we didn't stand a chance.

We tried fighting back...but...

I can...see my own bones...in my thighs...and my arms. Had I...not been upgraded, all four of my limbs...would be gone.

But I can't see for much longer...my eyes...they're being soaked by my own blood, pouring...from my head.

I can't wipe the blood away. My arms are heavy.

It's stopped hurting. I can't hear very well. Really the only thing I can hear is my own heartbeat.

And Shigure-onee-san's heartbeat. I'm...holding her body in my arms right now.

Somehow...if anything, I've managed to...protect her from all of the bombardments so far.

Because if, for some undeserved reason one of us can salvage this mission, Shigure-onee-san will be the one to do so.

My guns and torpedo launcher are destroyed. I can...no longer fight.

Everything's going numb...slowly. Not even my sister's body heat...is enough.

How could it...she's already lost a lot of blood already.

I can see...Harusame-onee-san...standing in front of me...I wonder what she's doing.

She may be protecting us...she looks like she's got her arms outstretched as though to block any more shots.

She's also yelling something, but...I can't hear what she's saying.

My breath...is shallow and short. All of my systems...are failing. My sensors...radar...body monitors...I don't even know whether or not my fingers have any nerve cells working properly anymore.

At least...the last time, it...was all so sudden...so that I didn't have time to think about it or dwell on it.

Last time, it just...happened.

I don't feel...angry. I don't feel resentful. I don't even feel all that...sad, or even remorseful.

I knew what I was getting myself into...how dangerous this was going to be.

It's just...

I wish I had...done just a little bit more. Lived...a little bit longer.

Oh...I'm sinking. My knees...my legs, they're becoming submerged...

It's over.

I'm sorry, everyone.

This wasn't a mission I could fail, but...I did.

I wonder if...there's a place a ship girl like me can go...after the end?

Maybe I'll...be the first to find out...

I can't feel the water on my face. I've let go of Shigure-onee-san.

She's not sinking yet. That's...good.

Shigure-onee-san, I hope...you make it out alive. Tell everyone...what happened to me, and...yeah...

Tell them that I -

...Shigure-onee-san?

No...wait, why...

Why are you getting up?

Why are you getting up?

No...! No...no, no...!

Harusame-onee-san...! Please, do something...!

Stop her!

Stop, Shigure-onee-san...!

My...my hand...won't reach...!

Shigure-onee-san...!

No! No! No! **No! No! No! No!**


	17. 六月十四日（土）

**[system advisory]**

 **[samidarekai.(mpu)] is offline**

 **Initiating comprehensive diagnostic scan**

 **Please wait...**

 **...**

 **...**

 **...**

 **...**

 **...**

 **[system advisory]**

 **Comprehensive diagnostic scan complete**

 **[system warning]**

 **[samidarekai.(cdx) offline]**

 **[samidarekai.(lss) offline]**

 **Heart and major brain functions shut down**

 **Organ decay rate: 4.882%**

 **Blood loss rate: 89.154%**

 **[system warning]**

 **Limb destruction detected in [right leg]**

 **[system warning]**

 **heavy tissue damage detected in [chest], [right arm], [left arm], [left leg], [abdomen]**

 **[system advisory]**

 **Initiating emergency reconstruction protocol [enginanobotdispersal.(exe)]**

 **Please wait...**

 **...**

 **...**

 **...**

 **...**

 **[system advisory]**

 **[enginanobotdispersal.(exe)] has failed to load**

 **Unable to access [enginanobotdispersal.(exe)]**

 **Standby for further instruction**

 **...**

 **...**

 **...**

 **...**

 **...**

 **...**

 **...**

 **...**

 **...**

 **...**

 **...**

 **...**

 **...**

 **...**

 **...**

 **...**

 **...**

 **...**

 **...**

 **...**

 **...**

 **...**

 **...**

 **...**

 **...**

 **...**

 **...**

 **...**

 **...**

 **...**

 **[system advisory]**

 **Unknown energy source detected**

 **[system warning]**

 **Programming breach detected in [samidarekai.(mpu)] in subsystem [samidarekai.(ptcl)]**

 **[system warning]**

 **Subsystem [samidarekai.(ptcl)] firewalls breached**

 **[system warning]**

 **Unauthorized recoding detected**

 **[system warning]**

 **Unknown hacking in progress**

 **Initiating [samidarekai.(ahcm)]**

 **[system warning]**

 **[samidarekai.(ahZm)] not fXuYd**

 **ReiniZXYting [samidYrekai.(ahXm)]**

 **[sysXem ZYrninX]**

 **[samZYXreZYi.(ZYXZ)] noX fZYXZ**

 **ZXY XYZXZYX ZX ZYX ZXY ZYXY ZXYZXYZYXYZXYZXY ZYX ZYXY ZX YXZYZYYZYX**

 **ZYXZYXYZXYZYXYZYXYZXYXYZYZXYZYXYZXYYX ZYX XZYXYZXYYZXYZY X**

 **XZYYXZYXZYXYZYZXY YZ YZ**

 **ZYXYXZYXZYYZYXYZYZXYYZXYXYZZYXYZYXYXYYZXYZY**

 **ZXYYZYXYZYXYZYXYZXYYZXYXZYXYZYXYZY**

 **ZXYYZYXYZXY**

 **ZXYYZX**

 **ZXYYZXY**

 **ZXYZXYXYZYXYXYZYXY...**

 **...**

 **...**

 **...**

 **...**

 **...**

 **...**

 **...**

 **...**

 **...**

 **...**

 **...**

 **[ZXYXZYZ ZXYZsorY]**

 **YZcodYZX deteZYXd**

 **[samiZYrekai.(ptXZ)] chanXe log requZYted**

 **[samidarekYi.(ptcl)] contains revised coding**

 **[WATERWILL.(aug)] restructured and renamed  
**

 **[system advisory]**

 **New protocol detected**

 **[BRIGHTWATER.(pctl)] online**

 **...**

 **...**

 **...**

 **...**

 **[system advisory]**

 **[samidarekai.(mpu)] rebooting...**


	18. 六月十五日（日）

**六月十五日（日）**

I can't see the stars tonight. The light pollution from the city of Los Angeles is blocking them out. It's a pity, but...at least I can have another chance to see the night sky again, and the few stars that do manage to shine through into the Earth's atmosphere.

I'm alive.

I...still can't believe that I'm alive.

It's not just my imagination. I really did sink. I checked the activity logs of my body's organ and motor functions, and everything in my body has a big gap between the times when I sank and earlier this morning...or last night, whichever is more accurate, a gap in which my body has recorded nothing, not even heart rates. Such signs can only point to one plausible conclusion, that I, at one point, died.

Not just me, too. Shigure-onee-san was also revived. She also testified that, like me, all major life support systems in her body shut down as well. Yet, here we are, the two of us, now sitting inside a small cave at Catalina Island. There's a sign that we saw as we took shelter in here earlier tonight that said "Strawberry Cove". A cute name for a place like this, I suppose, but given the extent of my and Shigure-onee-san's wounds, I am not one to complain.

I came to first, then Shigure-onee-san did so about an hour later after me. Harusame-onee-san was quite shocked at our revivals, and I was just as surprised that she was able to keep on course to our mission objective even while transporting the two of us while we were...dead. Since we lost our supplies in the battles against the Abyssals, we had no way of repairing ourselves out in the water. I doubt that any amount of supplies we could carry on our persons could have made a world of difference, though. Because we couldn't sail as well as we could (after all, I am missing my right leg from my knee down), we had to spend the entire day today just trying to reach our destination without being swept away by the winds and the currents. Normally such things aren't even a thought for us ship girls, but with Shigure-onee-san and I so heavily damaged, and me without a leg, such tasks go from menial to life-threatening. Thankfully, Harusame-onee-san helped us the entire day, having us hang onto her with our arms around her shoulders, as she guided us towards Catalina Island. There appeared to be lots of seagoing traffic entering Terminal Island, the nearby port, at the time we finally arrived, so Shigure-onee-san suggested that we stay low for the time being and attempt to infiltrate to reach the base later on tonight.

Harusame went around the island quickly to gather some wood for a fire and built one for us by striking her heavy metal wristcuffs against the gun barrels of her own destroyer friends (I only now noticed that her gun turrets are actually two Abyssal destroyers who obey her unconditionally, and Shigure-onee-san had a similar reaction) and letting the sparks kindle the fire. And as we huddled near our humble fire, warming ourselves up, Harusame-onee-san went out and fished and returned with a few fresh fish, which she gutted with her own bare hands and cooked for us.

I know I shouldn't have, but I felt moved to tears when Harusame-onee-san offered me my fish. She had taken care of our bodies after both of us had fallen in battle and even managed to sail straight towards our intended destination, even though we'd never informed her of the proper way to go. On top of that, even after we came back to life somehow, she helped us on, basically carrying much of our weight combined on her own and going so far as to prepare a warm fire and dinner for us. I kept crying as I ate my fish, bite by bite, but neither Shigure-onee-san nor Harusame-onee-san actually noticed because I wasn't making any noise. It wasn't like...I wasn't crying with too much emotion. I was simply...I was just so moved. The tears just came naturally, and...there was no way for me to stop them. Harusame-onee-san did notice my tears eventually as we were finishing our small dinners, and she asked me what was wrong with concern in her voice.

I explained that there was nothing wrong, that I was so touched by Harusame-onee-san's kindness. She always was very kind, but I said that I was so happy that even during such a difficult time like this, it was really comforting to know that Harusame-onee-san was taking care of us, even after she'd been captured by the Abyssals and turned into one of them. After I finished my fish, I asked Harusame-onee-san if she could give me a hug. She seemed reluctant, but she gave in. Her skin felt cool, as its pale tone looked to be, but since it is summer and we are now in Southern California, the nights are rather hot, so hugging Harusame-onee-san comforted me both physically and psychologically.

Shigure-onee-san looked kind of lonely, so I ushered her in with us too. Shigure-onee-san hugged the two of us very tightly.

"I was...so scared," she whispered to us. "I really thought it was all over..."

Indeed, we all agreed that this was some kind of...miracle. Shigure-onee-san and I had died, yet come back to life. Dare I say it...a deus ex machina-like event. Does Kami-sama want to torture us by killing us, then resurrecting us for the sake of making us suffer? Either way, I am merely glad to be alive again.

After we'd hugged it out enough, it was time to discuss the more serious matters at hand. How did we come back to life in the first place? By all accounts, both Shigure-onee-san and I are supposed to be dead, as though I haven't stated this enough times. Both of us checked our code log changes one more time, but nothing showed up that might give some kind of explanation as to what happened during our sunken states.

Well, that is actually false. Both Shigure-onee-san and I discovered that something in us _did_ change...but I will explain that very soon.

Harusame-onee-san recounted the events that followed after my death: Shigure-onee-san had sacrificed herself to kill off the wave of Abyssals that I had been fighting off in order to defend her, explaining why I possess hazy memories of seeing her walking forth away from me on the water when I knew she should not have been. Once Shigure-onee-san expired, using the rest of her strength and literally overworking her heart until it started hemorrhaging and caused her to die of a colossal heart attack, Harusame-onee-san said that she was confronted by another wave of Abyssal reinforcements, and she made the decision to defend us, rather than giving us up to her Abyssal comrades, like their leader demanded her to. It had been at that moment that she gained a power that she calls "serenity".

Serenity, from what Harusame-onee-san tells us, is the name that Abyssals like herself use to refer to their latent Abyssal powers. All Abyssals have some level of serenity; however, really the only Abyssals who even have enough serenity in their bodies for tangible use are special Abyssals like herself, or some of the stronger Abyssals like the Re-Class. This explains why the Re-Class is so strong, and why that Abyssal we know as "Hoppo" fought back against our entire fleet that one mission so easily. The catch with serenity is that for recently born special Abyssals like herself, Harusame-onee-san needed to "awaken" it somehow, that with time and battle experience, she was going to gain control over her own serenity eventually anyway. However, given the context in which she gained her own serenity, she believes that such an event can be triggered prematurely with a life-threatening situation or something of such dire nature, where additional power beyond standard limitations is required.

Because of Harusame-onee-san's acquisition of her serenity, she now believes that her serenity is the agent responsible for our revivals. There is nothing else in the equation that could have made any difference. But how exactly her serenity was able to resurrect us is a complete mystery. It even repaired Shigure-onee-san's punctured heart and closed the tear wound in my right leg to prevent us from bleeding out upon waking up earlier today.

On top of our miraculous reconstructions, Shigure-onee-san and I have discovered that our protocols have somehow been edited. Our protocols are normally locked portions of our main processing units that only allow those with administrative access to edit them or tamper with them. Even we ship girls cannot touch or change our own protocols or the coding or even move around the data caches dedicated to them. So for them to have been changed while we were unconscious...if Harusame-onee-san's serenity truly is the reason why we were able to come back to life, then Harusame-onee-san must be one of the most powerful Abyssals we have ever met. I am just quite thankful that she is our sister and not fighting _against_ us.

In any case, my Water Will augmentation is no longer. Instead, it has been replaced by something called "Brightwater". My change logs only mention this change by title only. It provides no other explanations or anything else that has been changed with my old augmentation. I do not know what this Brightwater protocol does or how I can wield it. And most frightening of all, this now means that I am in possession of a _protocol_ , not an _augmentation_. Shigure-onee-san's Standalone Protocol is, well, a protocol. To my understanding, a protocol is much, much stronger than a mere augmentation. While some augmentations were indeed quite powerful, like the Weapon Pre-Igniter that Kitakami-san possesses, it is still limited to some kind of weapon in order to be used properly. Shigure-onee-san's protocol, on the other hand, is like an entirely separate power source that can be summoned at will.

To put it in perspective, an augmentation turns a ship girl into a stronger ship girl. A protocol turns a ship girl into...

...I don't know what.

This is nothing against Shigure-onee-san; I will still love her deeply as my older ship sister no matter what. But I would be lying if I said that I was not afraid of the fact that I now had an active protocol in my main processing unit. I am extremely scared...that I, too, will be forced to use a power that will turn me into some kind of monstrosity. I am willing to fight. I just am not willing to fight like a monster...

Shigure-onee-san also reported a similar change to her own protocol. Now, it is apparently no longer called "Standalone Protocol". It is now called "Hellhound".

We all shuddered at the thought.

"As if I wasn't enough of a monster already," Shigure-onee-san mumbled aloud, very disheartened. "Now, it's not even trying to hide it. I really am just nothing more than a bloodthirsty dog."

Harusame-onee-san clasped Shigure-onee-san's hands, which cheered Shigure-onee-san up. It kind of looked like Harusame-onee-san wanted to say something, but she didn't. I wonder what was on her mind...?

This is enough talking, however. It is late at night, and much of the sea traffic has subsided by now. We put out the fire, and Harusame-onee-san helps me up, since Shigure-onee-san has recovered enough to the point where she can sail on her own.

I don't know why, but I gave Harusame-onee-san a kiss on the cheek. I meant it as thanks for her constant care for me. She smiled shyly at me. I think she understands.


	19. 六月十六日（月）

**六月十六日（月）**

We...got caught trying to enter the harbor by the harbor security. I suppose it was foolish of us, after all...trying to sneak in without being caught. We still show up on radar and other detection technologies due to our natures as ship girls. I suppose in hindsight, if we wanted to securely remain in hiding, we ought to have landed ashore first and the headed on foot to our location, but it would have been risky since we don't know the surrounding locale. Plus, with me heavily damaged and Harusame-onee-san's strange appearance, we may have been reported by the local populace anyway. Either way, getting to the base was no small feat, and we were taken in by American Coast Guard troops. Luckily for us, they did not make a scene about it - Shigure-onee-san urged us to cooperate so that we wouldn't be spotted by civilians, and we were taken into custody inside the harbor.

Because I learned English in order to read Teitoku's journal, I was able to communicate to the Coast Guards about our desired intentions, though I made it clear that we were not allowed to speak of our objectives. Shigure-onee-san and Harusame-onee-san were both very surprised by my ability to speak English. Harusame-onee-san had been under the impression that she needed to be the one doing the speaking, since apparently as an Abyssal, they've been constructed with a large language codec pack already installed that allows them to speak every single major world language whenever the situation arose, not necessarily at will. In any case, after our initial interrogation, we were detained for an additional twelve hours and kept in separate rooms by ourselves - Shigure-onee-san in one room, Harusame-onee-san in another room, and me in yet another. They did not do anything to treat the wounds that we sported; we were ordered to simply sit on plastic folding chairs that they provided until they decided what to do with us.

It was...unfortunate, the way they treated us. I can understand them detaining us because of what we tried to do. But...that being said, when Shigure-onee-san tried to help me to my room, they grabbed her and shoved her in the direction of her own containment room. I saw the look of murder in her face. I knew she wanted to kill these men. But I told her that it wasn't worth it. We weren't here to kill people. So she unwillingly obeyed, and I had to hobble to my own room with one leg. Harusame-onee-san, too, didn't escape mistreatment either. I, knowing English, overheard several soldiers calling her a freak as she was escorted to her room as well. "Albino-lookin' slut", they called her, because of her pale skin. Thank goodness Shigure-onee-san doesn't understand English...yet. I'm sure Harusame-onee-san understood them, but she gave no sign of physical reaction from what I could tell.

If Shigure-onee-san and Harusame-onee-san truly wanted to, they could have easily broken out and retrieved me to escape the harbor containment facility, but through our proximity communications, I pleaded with them not to do anything drastic. I had to keep repeating that we were not here to kill innocent people, regardless of how they treated us. Unfair as they may have treated us, they did not understand the nature of our mission, and we could not explain to them why we were here to begin with. We did manage to get caught in such a way that the Coast Guards believed we had somehow swum our way to the harbor without getting caught somehow, so we don't have to worry about our identities as ship girls being discovered for the time being...although I did hear at least one such guard call us a term that I don't recognize. I wonder what a "weeb" is...one can only assume this is a derogatory term, though I do not know in what manner.

So for twelve hours until the middle of the afternoon, we sat there. I tried going to sleep, but the guards that I sensed were watching me from outside my room slammed on my wall and yelled at me not to go to sleep, so I had to force myself to stay awake despite my wounds and my low blood levels. It was painful. I have always known that there are many types of pain that I can feel...I suppose this was my first time encountering the pain of exhaustion to this extent, left unrepaired for longer than is safe. Nearing the end of our detainment, I was at the point where even being able to sleep for a handful of minutes would be such a relief.

It was a big prayer, essentially, but finally, one of our developers from Seal Team Six, Sanford-sensei, arrived. From what he would tell us later on, he and his team had been alerted about us, that the Coast Guard had detained three suspicious female individuals who had tried to sneak into the country through the Los Angeles Harbor, possible castaways or refugees or something of the like, so being the special forces in the area, Seal Team Six was summoned to investigate, and Sanford responded. He was extremely surprised to find us here and immediately gathered us back into the same room again before calling the rest of our development team. Shigure-onee-san hugged me the tightest that I've ever felt her do so. Even though we could still communicate freely without worrying about the Coast Guards jamming us (since they were unaware of our ship girl identities), Shigure-onee-san had been spending all twelve of those hours worrying herself to death about me, about how my leg wound and all these hours of waiting in solitary confinement would devastate me. I gave her a tired smile and said not to worry about me, and now that Sanford-sensei was here to take care of us, there was nothing else we needed to do.

We had completed our objective. We did what we were ordered to do, what we _had_ to do.

If it was any consolation to us in regards to our less-than-satisfactory treatment by the Coast Guards, Sanford-sensei was extremely livid. He was practically screaming at the Coast Guards for not doing anything to treat our wounds - he used me as the most conspicuous example. I suppose Sanford-sensei must be a very high-ranking American soldier, for the Coast Guards were silent the entire time. Even the Coast Guard commander at the harbor who first interrogated us did not say a word. It was one of the lieutenant commanders who spoke up first, saying that they were not sure whether or not we too could be terrorists, citing an incident somewhere in Germany, by the sounds of it, about how terrorists had attacked innocent civilians. As Coast Guards, the lieutenant commander said that they weren't going to risk an incident like that happening on American soil.

Sanford-sensei punched that poor man in the face anyway.

"Even though you're right, I'm still pissed the fuck off," he yelled.

Shigure-onee-san seemed to like that a lot.

Soon, the rest of the team arrived. Deimos-sensei, Losira-sensei, Hank-sensei, Chuck-sensei, Kane-sensei, Big-sensei, and Lauren-sensei. Chuck-sensei, the big Indian man, gently lifted me to their military truck, where Shigure-onee-san and Harusame-onee-san joined me too. I saw Losira-sensei and Big-sensei give some very angry looks to the Coast Guards. I could only assume that they felt the same way as Sanford-sensei.

We were taken to our intended destination, the San Pedro Fuel Depot, where they brought us to their underground base and research and development facility. There we met the Abyssals we had captured during our time in Okinawa. The Abyssal destroyers, submarines, Ritou-chan, Kuubo-san, among others. They had sensed the Abyssal in Harusame-onee-san approaching, so they were excited to see who the newcomer was.

Our developers wanted to repair us all immediately, but I dissuaded them from doing so because we were here on a highly classified mission. Our first objective of reaching this location had been met; now, we needed to complete our second objective. So they took us to the common room, a very strange but fascinating dark room whose floors, walls, and ceiling were all electronically sentient and depicted the solar system in a very movie theater-esque manner. Even Haley's Comet kept flying by us every few minutes.

Deimos-sensei explained that Seal Team Six had been cut off from their communications with the JMSDF a week following the Abyssal attack on our base in Okinawa, so I continued the story from there. I told them about how the Okinawa fleet had been divided and sent to five main naval bases in Atsugi, Kure, Maizuru, Hiroshima, and Oroku as veteran instructors of the rest of the Moebius Four Platoon who had yet to deploy. I told them about how I had been the first ship girl to be given a rank and uniform at our base due to my experience as one of the first ship girls in the original fleet. I told them what I knew about the political atmosphere of the country and of our own military branches. I told them about the most recent Abyssal attack on the Yokosuka Naval Yards, how several of the ship girls stationed at Atsugi Naval Air Station had been sunk in action because they had attacked right in the middle of our naval training there. I told them about how we were facing a dire problem of how to repair, reconstruct, and sustain us ship girls without the help of Seal Team Six, about how we had the country's best scientists, doctors, and researchers working to try to reverse-engineer the technology behind us so that they, too, could understand us and figure out independent ways to maintain us. Then, I finally told them about our mission, how Akiyama-san and Takahashi-san had ordered us to make the journey across the Pacific to contact our developers and secure a way for us to repair our sunken ship girls and sustain them, because those doctors were going to take too long.

I could tell that I now posed a very perplexing predicament to our developers, for they did not know how to respond and were of differing opinions. Kane-sensei said that they couldn't afford to hand over their tech, because the JMSDF was no longer trusthworthy, and according to their spies within the Japanese government and military, there was more than enough evidence to suggest that the JMSDF was either working extremely closely with the Japanese government or simply acting as its puppet outright. Therefore, giving them the technology needed to maintain us would be counterproductive, as it would enable Japan to go as crazy as it wanted in regards to ship girl construction and whatnot, but Lauren-sensei pointed out that if the JMSDF truly was a puppet, then Chief of Staff Akiyama-san, who is the most powerful officer in the JMSDF and head of the navy committee, would not have allowed this mission to even exist. Losira-sensei said that they ought to do _something_ to help out, since their own creations, us ship girls, were at stake, and she didn't feel all that comfortable knowing that there were some of us who desperately need repairs back in Japan, but Deimos countered with the question of how, a question that none of the developers have been able to answer decisively yet.

For the time being, Sanford-sensei and Deimos-sensei took me to the operation rooms and put me inside a repair chamber - Shigure-onee-san too, for that matter. Lauren-sensei assured us that we had done a great job, that we did our mission well and made our commanders proud. They would take care of us from here, so we no longer had to worry.

I'm just so relieved...that we've made it safely. There are so many things that I'm still worried about, but...I'm just too tired to think about them all. My leg is stinging a little because the robot arms are operating on it right now, but the coolness inside the chamber is refreshing...

It's...it's so strange. Because before this mission, I thought...being able to go to sleep thinking about you, Teitoku, was a kind of suffering. But now, it's...it's like a blessing. At Atsugi, I couldn't help but think about all the...all the misery, the pain...the moments when I held you in my arms the day they attacked...how my arms and legs and hands were coated in your warm blood. But now, I...I just want to think about all the times we had together, no matter how brief.

I just want to be happy, Teitoku. I want to quit being a ship girl and be a normal girl. I don't want to hurt this bad anymore.

But...I suppose that, after being miraculously revived...I suppose that is simply asking for too much...

I love you, Teitoku. I want to see you again so badly.

五月雨


	20. 六月十七日（火）

**六月十七日（火）**

I spent...too many hours crying today. Only just now have I...calmed down enough to collect my thoughts...

If there are lapses in my internal communique logs, then...then please be aware that I may need a moment...

I think this is one of those kinds of situations when native English speakers may ask, "Do you want the good news first, or the bad news?" So...for me, while I do not know the preferred response, I will start with the good news.

Our developers have been steadily researching Abyssal technology with the cooperation of the captured Abyssals who have been living here in this base for the past weeks and months. Although it appears that there still is a lot of work to be done to understand Abyssal technology completely, they have made significant headway ever since our base in Okinawa was attacked - in Sanford-sensei's words, now that they no longer could directly involve themselves with the needs of us ship girls in the Platoon due to our seizure by our Japanese government, this freed up lots of time to dedicate to studying Abyssal technology. While I was being repaired, Big-sensei and Deimos-sensei immediately noticed that the augmentation that was given to me after my first death while serving under Teitoku, my Water Will augmentation, had been tampered with and changed, as I had seen. Deimos-sensei said that they tried to access it and crack the very strange Abyssal code that the "Brightwater Protocol" is now apparently written in, but mysteriously, they could not. Seeing that our developers in Seal Team Six are the only people in the world who have administrative access to the locked portions of our main processing units (augmentation slots being an example of a locked cache), the fact that even they cannot access this particular protocol is, needless to say, very frightening.

Big-sensei asked me if I was feeling any different from before, from before my second death during our battle across the Pacific and now, after I had revived. I shook my head and said no; I really did not feel any different when I remember regaining consciousness in Harusame-onee-san's arm. At first I thought perhaps this was at least a benevolent sign, since the change was only restricted to my augmentation that has since morphed into a protocol. But Big-sensei and Deimos-sensei apparently think differently. In fact, according to the latter, it would have actually been better if I was showing some kind of pain or some side-effect of having a new protocol installed in my systems, because that way, they could more accurately study my new protocol and understand the symptoms of having it. From the way they talked about it, I became scared and asked if they were possibly referring to it as some kind of disease on purpose, and to my horror, they indeed said that they considered this protocol a disease - or, in technical terms, a _virus_. It was all clear to them, they said, that a foreign entity had penetrated their administrative locks on my main processing unit, infiltrated a specific area of my main processing unit, and proceeded to infect it and morph it. By definition, this could be nothing other than a virus.

The good news in regards to my protocol is that this "virus" that is my new Brightwater Protocol is, from what I am told, extremely stable. Big-sensei said that they expected this virus to be very dangerous and volatile and attempt to contaminate other areas of my main processing unit, but for some reason it showed no signs of doing so, which perhaps means that the virus, if it is one, has chosen to quarantine itself in that one particular spot in my brain. Comparing this to human anatomy, my new protocol can be referred to as a benign cancer tumor, developed but unspreading. Of course, there is always the threat of it one day deciding to emerge from dormancy and going rampant, but for now I did not have to worry about it and could carry on.

I know that this may not seem like "good news" at first, but...compared to the "bad news", even something as neutral as this seems like good news.

I also was able to exert some degree of control over my new protocol, but I will discuss this when I begin talking about Harusame-onee-san.

The other good news is Harusame-onee-san herself. Just as Kitakami-san and Yuudachi-onee-san from before, our developers were able to successfully revert the Abyssalization done onto Harusame-onee-san. She woke up just in time for dinner, and Shigure-onee-san and I threw ourselves onto her, and all three of us cried happily. I didn't think it was possible for me to ever feel so happy again after Teitoku became grievously injured at Okinawa and after both Kawakaze and Suzukaze sank at Yokosuka. Even though their deaths still weighed heavily in the back of my mind, I still wanted to partake as much as I could in the joy of receiving Harusame-onee-san back again. Even if it was just one of my sisters I have been able to bring back to life, I was still so incredibly overjoyed and relieved.

Now...the bad news...

The first dagger hit me after dinner. Losira-sensei and Lauren-sensei asked us for our time and took us into their separate computer lab, where they explained that they had been working to see what they could do for our sunken ship sisters and comrades back in Japan who were still awaiting surgery for reconstruction. Unfortunately, they broke the terrible truth to us that...perhaps it may not be possible to revive them. Seeing that Kawakaze and Suzukaze and the others had sunk on June 5th - twelve days ago - Lauren-sensei sadly informed us that it may be already too late to do anything for them. Apparently, we ship girls can remain sunken for up to a week without incurring damage to our internal computer and logging systems. In fact, even in a sunken state, our main processing units, if they are not damaged, still record information and keep track of time so that in the event that we do become reconstructed, we still keep our senses of time and date intact. However, as Losira-sensei showed us in their lab, seven days is the limit of our main processing units' ability to hold out without bodily sustenance, like blood, oxygen, and nutrition. After all, despite brains being essentially computers in operation, they are still human organs, just enhanced ones, but human organs nonetheless, meaning that without nourishment, they will decay and begin to malfunction. Unless their bodies were being kept in a special stasis chamber or in an environment where their bodies are being preserved before the seven day mark, Kawakaze, Suzukaze, Taihou-senpai, Shirayuki-chan, and Nagara-senpai will all most likely be beyond saving. We were never told the exact conditions of their bodies - I was only told by Akiyama-san that their bodies were being kept somewhere in hopes that we would be able to bring back some kind of reconstruction method for them. They could very well be rotting away in some damp room in a warehouse somewhere.

Just thinking this...gives me chills. Oh please, oh please God, don't let it be this way...

Losira-sensei and Lauren-sensei promised us that they would work hard to find a way. Losira-sensei said that they couldn't possibly let us down when the three of us had sailed all this way by ourselves, with limited equipment and provisions, just to turn us away empty-handed. We were their creations; we were their ship girls, no matter who laid claim to our ownership. Therefore, they were going to do what they could. Politics is always second to the needs of family, they said.

When they said this, I teared up. Again, I felt like such a crybaby, but I couldn't help feeling so touched that our developers, even though they probably could have chosen to abandon us in favor of other projects because of the circumstances surrounding the relationship between our two countries, were still trying to take care of us. I know for a fact that Losira-sensei, Deimos-sensei, and Big-sensei (the entire team at some point) had made the long flight back and forth from here to Okinawa to take care of us, to pick up our bodies when we had sunk, bring them back here to repair us, and then fly us back out to Okinawa, stronger than before, multiple times. Our developers are not enhanced humans like us ship girls. They are just normal human beings. Yes, I know that they are not your average human beings, since they _are_ a special operations team, after all. But still, they are no ship girls like us. And to think that they have done and will continue to do so much for us...

Lauren-sensei gave me a hug. She said that we would be all right.

The second dagger struck me immediately after this. As we left to head back to the common room to spend some time alone with Harusame-onee-san, we were stopped by Ritousei-ki-san - or "Ritou-chan", as we've come to call her during her short time back at the base in Okinawa. Ritou-chan asked me if she could take some time from me, for she had something very important to say. She said that Shigure-onee-san and Harusame-onee-san _\- particularly_ Harusame-onee-san - could join us. So we invited her with us to the common room to sit with us, and I asked her what it was she wanted to talk about.

To begin, Ritou-chan asked Harusame-onee-san if she remembered anything during her time as an Abyssal. Harusame-onee-san answered that she didn't. For the entire duration as Kuchikusei-ki Hime, as was her identity as an Abyssal, her memory logs had recorded a giant blank, black data wipe. Nothing was recorded during this time, according to Harusame-onee-san's memory files. We watched Ritou-chan's eyes grow very wide. We knew immediately, judging by Ritou-chan's reaction, that something bad had happened.

Ritou-chan began to explain to us the dual identity that Harusame-onee-san now represents. The Abyssal Harusame-onee-san - Kuchikusei-ki Hime, or Destroyer Princess, as was her name - was in fact another separate person entirely. She wasn't the same as Harusame-onee-san; she was her own unique persona. Ritou-chan revealed that after Shigure-onee-san and I had been taken in for repairs, Kuchikusei-ki Hime had confided in her the thoughts she had about us and about herself.

Both Shigure-onee-san and I were filled with horror at our ignorance. We both had truly believed that Harusame-onee-san had been the same person this whole time. We thought that her personality had changed as a result of her Abyssalization. We were completely unaware that she was, in fact, an entirely _new_ person. But I protested - she'd never talked about this with us. She never discussed this with us. We were kept in the dark, for some reason. Why didn't she tell us this?

This was when Ritou-chan began to speak the words that were truly wounding. She said that although she was merely a mediator, and that only a few hours' worth of conversation was definitely not enough to have understood Kuchikusei-ki completely, this was what she took away from it. Kuchikusei-ki had been suffering from severe identity crisis that came to a climax immediately after the attack on the Yokosuka Naval Yards, when she first met me and Shigure-onee-san. But her crisis peaked again immediately after her serenity awakened following my and Shigure-onee-san's deaths, when her serenity gave her access to all of Harusame-onee-san's memories, thus confirming that she in fact was an Abyssalized ship girl. Ritou-chan said that Kuchikusei-ki eventually decided that she herself was a fraudulent, shameful mimicry of Harusame-onee-san, and that she was denying Harusame-onee-san of her rightful place in her own body. She had decided to keep her true identity as "Kuchikusei-ki" secret from us because she had been afraid of what our reactions might be if she were to tell us who she really was, that she wasn't really our ship sister we thought she was. She said that the two of us, Shigure-onee-san and I, had shown her a bit of what having friendships felt like, during our short few days together on our dangerous mission across the Pacific, and that she was content with disappearing with "a few memories she could call her own".

Tears were already soaking the bottom of my uniform even well before Ritou-chan even finished, and when she did, the cries of guilt I was doing my best to hold back finally burst through their floodgates.

That night, just before we attempted to enter the Los Angeles Harbor, when she looked like she wanted to tell me something,

Was this what she had wanted to tell me?

I'm so sorry, Kuchikusei-ki-chan. I - I didn't know. I'm so sorry. If only you had told us...if only you told us...

Shigure-onee-san tried to comfort me by putting my face into her bosom and hugging me, but she too was crying a lot, for I felt her tears drip onto the back of my neck. Harusame-onee-san, although at first shocked that there was an alter-ego form of her controlling her body during the time she was an Abyssal, soon also joined us, for she too felt downright guilty and depressed at Kuchikusei-ki-chan's self-inflicted attitude.

I desperately asked Ritou-chan if there was some way to talk to Kuchikusei-ki-chan. Couldn't Harusame-onee-san bring her back? If they are two separate entities, couldn't she still be inside, somehow? Somehow? Somehow...?

Ritou-chan said she could be of no assistance. Kitakami-san and Yuudachi-onee-san were normal examples compared to Harusame-onee-san, so she didn't know what to do, as this was her first time encountering an Abyssal identity that was born out of an Abyssalization process. Besides, she'd been spending the past month and a half living underground here with no contact with the rest of her Abyssal kin, and frankly, she said, she didn't need it. She was way out of the loop of what the other Abyssals roaming about in the world were up to.

Most likely, given Kuchikusei-ki-chan's attitude just before our developers began to operate on her, Ritou-chan believed that Kuchikusei-ki-chan...may be no more. More likely than not, Kuchikusei-ki's identity may have been removed entirely through the reversion process to restore Harusame-onee-san's original persona.

In other words...she has died.

Not only this, but Kuchikusei-ki-chan wanted Ritou-chan to tell us that she had said goodbye through her, if in the case that we ever asked about her. Well, Ritou-chan admitted that she felt compelled to tell us about her. It would be a terrible thing to keep secret, and Ritou-chan didn't want to tarnish her memory by leaving us in the dark. She didn't deserve that much.

I don't...I don't want this. This is all too sad.

I thought that by coming here, I would gain a sister. Now I know that I have only come here to lose a friend.

No. No, I...I don't...I don't know what to think anymore. I don't want to write anymore. Writing this all, thinking about this all a second, third time is unbearable.

That isn't how anyone should say goodbye! No one deserves that kind of death! No one!

No one...

Teitoku, this is your arm you've hugged me with once upon a time. Please comfort me. I just want to stop thinking...

五月雨


	21. 六月十八日（水）

**六月十八日（水）**

When I met with Harusame-onee-san and Shigure-onee-san, they were worried for me because they did not recall seeing me join them in our room that our developers had set aside for us to stay in during our stay here. Shigure-onee-san asked me where I was, so I took them over to the room I stayed in to show them.

Teitoku's room.

Yesterday night, after we spoke with Ritou-chan, I couldn't bear to go to sleep so soon with my sisters. So I stumbled down the corridor, paralyzed by grief, and I eventually ended up having to sit down and cry into my lap, with my knees against my forehead. It was then that Chuck-sensei found me and asked me what was wrong. I was too tired and saddened to really tell him, so he refrained from asking again.

He then told me that my Admiral was here. At first, I did not understand him. Takahashi-san? Why would he be here? I wasn't sure if I understood Chuck-sensei. So he clarified - not my current Admiral, my _previous_ one.

Admiral Kevinson. The only man I would ever call "Teitoku".

He led me to the room in which he is now kept. I couldn't believe my eyes. He was actually there in person. I rushed to his side on his bed. Most of his body is still bandaged because of the severity of his wounds that he incurred during the attack on our base in Okinawa. Both of his legs gone, his right arm gone...all the terrible memories hit me all at once the moment I laid my eyes on his body. The shelling, the explosions, the debris falling from the ceiling, the blood, and all the screaming...the numbness I felt when I saw what happened to him...

Chuck-sensei explained to me that Seal Team Six had brought Teitoku's body here immediately after the day of the attack. Technically our developers were supported to transport the body back to Teitoku's family, but given his relationship with his parents and our developers' own personal problems with them as well, they'd kept his body here.

I asked Chuck-sensei what they were planning to do with Teitoku. Why not move him to a hospital where they could treat him better? Why keep him here?

Chuck-sensei had to tell me that Teitoku is still incredibly comatose - so much so that any ordinary hospital would have already recommended to simply "pull the plug" on him...or, in other words, let him die for real. Obviously I did not want that. In addition, Teitoku was someone Seal Team Six wanted to keep alive. Teitoku is the only person in the world who actually has any real expertise in leading ship girls as a competent Admiral because of the four months he served with us at Okinawa. And judging from the reports he compiled from those four months' worth of leadership, our developers determined that it was worth keeping him alive with the hopes that he would recover.

So I asked how exactly they were going to try to keep him alive. Chuck-sensei said that he couldn't talk about that - just having me know about the fact that Teitoku is still being kept here would get him in trouble with the others, so if possible I needed to keep this a secret between us. But Chuck-sensei guessed that he and his squadmates were going to try to use the Abyssal technology they were gathering from the captured Abyssals and reverse-engineer the tech to discover some useful medical techniques to help Teitoku recover. But Chuck-sensei emphasized that they were far from getting any tangible results - in fact, it could be years before they could find anything significant enough to report. For being so similar to us, apparently Abyssal program coding is that much different than ours - not even hacking will do the developers any good because their hacking tools do not understand Abyssal code language.

But he let me stay with Teitoku for the night. When I asked him why he would risk getting in trouble with the other developers for showing me Teitoku's body, he said that when they were transporting him here, there had been a few times when Teitoku was mouthing something in his coma. When Chuck-sensei decided to read what he was saying, Teitoku was mouthing the words "Samidare" and "Shigure".

"Maybe fate, but good that you two come here," Chuck-sensei said.

Fate? Is that what this is called nowadays? Fate?

Regardless, I fell asleep with him. Because his right arm is no more, I crawled over to the other side of his bed so that I could tuck my head underneath his left arm instead. Now that I think back on this, I feel so pathetic. To do such childish things...

So naturally I did not end up going back to my room because I did not want to leave Teitoku here by himself. And when I did, Shigure-onee-san and Harusame-onee-san found me, asking me where I had been.

Shigure was just as equally stunned to learn that Teitoku had been here the entire time after Okinawa. Harusame fell to her knees in numb shock. Naturally too, she did not know what had befallen our Admiral at the time of the attack on Okinawa. She did not know the wounds that he suffered, so as Shigure slowly sat down next to Teitoku's bandaged body, with her eyes glued to his calm face, Harusame stayed on the floor with her face in her hands. I could see tears dripping down onto the floor through the gaps in her fingers, but Harusame did not make a noise other than her breathing.

"Teitoku? Teitoku...it's me, Shigure," Shigure-onee-san tried to talk to Teitoku. She may have been talking to him in the wild hopes that he would miraculously wake up in response to her voice. "Please, Teitoku. I'm right here. Please, open your eyes. It's me, Shigure. I...I...we...we miss you. All of us do. You can't die like this. You can't die like this. You can't die, you can't, you can't..."

And before long, Shigure too began to weep again.

I knew that Shigure's attempt to wake him was not going to work...because I myself had done the exact same thing the previous night. Teitoku is too heavily comatose. He cannot hear us, and he will not wake simply to the sounds of our voices begging him to do so. This is not a shoujo manga in which all ends are good, happy endings. Our own ending may be anything but happy, and seeing our own legless, armless Teitoku lying on his bed, bandaged and hooked up to an IV drip, is clear proof and a damning sign of an ending that none of us desire that very well may be our own.

I had already cried my fill the previous night. The dried stains on the light bedsheet underneath Teitoku's only remaining limb is evidence of this. I had cried enough yesterday - I had no tears to shed today. My body was so exhausted by all of my emotions pouring out of me that my main processing unit had to shut down my emotional cortex before my own rampant sadness began to deconstruct the very coding of my daily processes. Any more crying today, and I would have been in danger of severely malfunctioning as a direct result of my emotions. So I sat with Shigure-onee-san and I hugged her as she wept at Teitoku's side. But because Harusame was crying by herself silently at the side of Teitoku's bed, I sat down with her and hugged her too.

I may have shut down my emotions so that I would not be dictated by them, but emotions don't control whether or not your body feels good or feels bad. Physically seeing my sisters weep and suffer made me feel incredibly bad at the most basic levels of my psyche. If it is possible to feel sad without relying on emotions, then I achieved it earlier this morning.

Although I did not tell the rest of our developers about how Chuck-sensei had shown me Teitoku's room, we were discovered there anyway by Kane-sensei. At first, I thought all three of us, especially me, would be in dire trouble for discovering a room that we shouldn't have and began to beg Kane-sensei to let us stay just a little bit longer with Teitoku, but she waved me down and said not to worry. This man was our Admiral, after all. If we so cared about our Admiral enough to want to see him like this, then she wasn't going to deny us that wish.

Not one of us ate anything today. Instead, we spent the whole day with Teitoku in his room. We took care of him, switching out his IV bags, washing his face and skin with damp towels to keep him clean, and borrowing a pair of scissors to cut his hair that has grown much longer than is necessary and was giving him a rather unkempt look. Harusame even cut his fingernails on his left hand. She said that anything she could do for her Teitoku that she had abandoned and left to suffer like this would help her feel just a little bit better about herself, but it was clear to me that she wasn't feeling any better by doing these things. She still had that glazed, numbed look of pain on her face, and her eyes were deadly empty.

I suppose all of our eyes were. After all, we were sitting in front of the battered body of the young man who helped us grow as ship girls and had eventually come to treat his girls as though they were his own family, to the point where he was religiously celebrating our own birthdays with us. And for me and Shigure-onee-san specifically, he accepted our feelings and even allowed us to indulge in them. I do not know how it is usually supposed to be, but for me it was hard for me not to have a glazed, numb look on my own face. Otherwise, it would hurt too much.

Earlier tonight, Shigure informed me that should Teitoku not awake during our time here at this secret base, and should she herself not survive to see the day that Teitoku regained consciousness, she begged me to take good care of him. Because humans cannot just regrow knew limbs or have them reconstructed easily, most likely Teitoku would be a severely handicapped veteran with very limited capabilities to look after himself. And because Shigure-onee-san predicted that she, given her combat tendencies and dark record of having unstable, dangerous emotional patterns that bordered on suicidal, would most likely not live to see the day when she could meet Teitoku properly. If in such a case, she said, I needed to take care of him. I was Teitoku's girlfriend, after all. Shigure-onee-san herself did not want to steal him away from me.

I protested, saying that that wasn't how I wanted Shigure-onee-san to think of this either. She couldn't just throw herself away for my sake, just for the sake of making things "easy". I argued that in the case that Teitoku woke up again, we should both work and fight to stay alive until then. We could let him choose for himself which one of us was the one for him. Fortunately, Harusame-onee-san agreed with me. She said that Shigure-onee-san's method would only cause everyone more pain, and that we had felt enough pain now. So Shigure-onee-san relented.

"We should all take care of him together," Harusame-onee-san said, and we ended it at that.

I suppose the silver lining to all this is that I have been able to see Teitoku at least one more time. Even if it wasn't the way I wanted to meet him again...

I love you, Teitoku. I will always take care of you to the best of my ability.

五月雨


	22. 六月十九日（木）

**六月十九日（木）**

I had a nervous breakdown today. Thankfully it did not last long.

I do not want to make myself even more saddened than I already am, but I feel that it must be said that, today, I have perhaps felt the most amount of misery in my days as a ship girl.

I remember waking up today and eating breakfast with Harusame-onee-san and Shigure-onee-san. Lauren-san was on mess duty, and she prepared for us a delicious breakfast of pancakes and maple syrup. I remember Harusame-onee-san remarking that this must be what an American-style breakfast must be like, for it was so much food to eat for something as light as breakfast. Indeed, Shigure-onee-san said that eating too much first thing in the morning would do our metabolism no favors, but we ate all of the pancakes anyway.

I then remember walking back to the room...Teitoku's room. I remember sitting down beside him. I remember reaching down to his pale face and softly pressing my palm against his cheek.

That is where my memory files go dark. I rewatched my memory files of today, the ones that have managed to be auto-saved...and as soon as I set my hand against Teitoku's cheek, my vision plunges into darkness.

Because I don't remember any of what happened today, considering I only recently awoke a few hours ago, I had my sisters fill in the giant hole in my memory cache. When I saw their reactions to my request, I knew what I had done was not pretty.

Shigure-onee-san's and Harusame-onee-san's memories revealed to me that a few minutes after I had went off to Teitoku's room, they, who had stayed behind to speak with Lauren-san, walked back to Teitoku's room to join me. And when they entered the room, they found me in a horrifying state.

They found me sitting next to Teitoku and holding up his intact arm so that his hand was on my cheek. My right cheek was bloody underneath his hand when they found me, and the fingertips of my armglove dripping with blood all the way down to my elbow. Understandably, they thought at first glance that I was clawing into Teitoku's only remaining limb with my fingernails and rushed to pull me away. I apparently showed no resistance, and Shigure, who reached me first, ended up pulling me away so hard that I collapsed onto the floor.

And when they helped me sit up and tried to ask me what on Earth I was doing, they found me unable to speak. My complexion at the time was downright terrifying, and when I saw myself through their memory files, I nearly screamed at what I myself looked like. My eyes were stretched as wide open as they could go. My blue eyes had turned into a dark, dark color of blue that could almost pass for black. There were tears streaming down my right eye, and a single drop of blood down my left. My face had been frozen like this, unchanging, despite the best efforts of my sisters to bring me back to usual. Shigure-onee-san called for the developers, and Big-sensei and Deimos-sensei rushed me back to the operation room to diagnose my conditiong

They extracted my mental thought log just before they shut my main processing unit down to restart my systems because Big-sensei noticed immediately that my mental thought log was dangerously close to hitting maximum capacity, when such a feat should normally be impossible under most usual circumstances. When they cracked the files and opened them, the files were filled with nothing but the word "Teitoku" repeated, over and over and over, in both kanji and romanji. Big-sensei said that simply out of morbid curiosity, he took the liberty of counting exactly how many times I mentally wrote the word, but the program lines he ran to figure this out simply malfunctioned and failed. There were too many "Teitoku's" for the command to count and forced it to error out.

Our developers concluded to Shigure-onee-san and Harusame-onee-san that I had most likely attempted to commit mental suicide, and that they could not determine decisively as to why with their current knowledge. It was clear to them that something between me and Teitoku triggered this frightening event in me, and they asked Shigure-onee-san and Harusame-onee-san to help them figure out why. So Shigure-onee-san informed them of our relationship with Teitoku. She revealed to them that we had taken our relationship a little bit further than was probably allowed for military regulations, that we saw each other more than simply subordinate and commander.

"So in other words, you both hooked up with him," Sanford-sensei concluded. Neither Shigure-onee-san nor I preferred to put it in such terms, but the point was made clear.

Losira-sensei made the conjecture that I suffered a critical mental crack, but that the timing of it was very strange. Why did I break down today, and why so drastically? Perhaps such questions can never be answered. Deimos-sensei did bring up the fact that a similar issue happened with Shigure-onee-san herself, when Teitoku reported to Seal Team Six that Shigure-onee-san had a serious mental defect that eventually turned into her powerful Guilt Protocol. If Shigure-onee-san's incident can be seen as a precedent to my own nervous breakdown, then perhaps this was a serious design flaw in us ship girls, that we could be more prone to violent or eerie mental outbreaks that could seriously handicap our behaviors and activities.

But Shigure-onee-san supported me by insisting for my sake that this was more likely due to a conflict of strong emotions clashing with the experience of confronting the difficult sight of the wounded Teitoku. With my personality, she said, it would be easy for me to lose my cool, so to speak, and lose control of my thoughts when my mind had had enough of a difficult experience, such as seeing the comatose body of my former Admiral.

Kane-sensei then suggested that perhaps this was a disorder amongst us Shiratsuyu-Class only. Shigure-onee-san's mental breakdown before her remodels and my own mental breakdown earlier today seemed too similar in terms of severity to overlook their possible connection, she pointed out. In addition, our severe outbursts were bad enough to get us classified as legally insane in normal mental clinics and hospitals; Shigure-onee-san due to her difficult memories of the past, and me due to my strong emotions for Teitoku.

Either way, what they could all agree upon was the fact that my cheek was torn open so much that it was almost about to poke through into the inside of my mouth. And considering that Teitoku's arm was not harmed at all, and the fingertips of my glove was coated with blood...

I spent the next hour in my room where I woke up by myself. The sleep and my forced restart have completely erased everything that I have experienced for the past twelve hours, so I am not as emotional as I otherwise might be. That still does not change the fact that I am terrified at what I have done to myself.

I can easily imagine what I must have looked like in Teitoku's room, during the time I briefly lost my sanity and my mind began to go rampant. Sitting on the bed, my eyes widened, lifting up Teitoku's hand to my own cheek. Have I become what they call a _yandere_? Is this what my feelings have become for Teitoku? Has my mind suffered so much at his loss and absence that my longing for him, his warmth, and his presence have warped my mind and my subconscious? The fact that I am completely unable to recall anything past breakfast this morning is nothing short to me of horrifying. It scares me terribly, so much so that after I was done watching through both of my sisters' memory files, I curled up underneath the covers of my bed and could not stop shivering, even though it is very hard for us ship girls to feel cold.

Have I become a monster? Is this what I truly am? Underneath my every day guise of a sweet, polite, and bright girl, if I wear away the extraneous layers of daily Samidare, is this what I find? A savage monster whose true desires finally bubble up to the surface when there is nothing else to clear out of the way?

Or perhaps, worst of all, now that I think about it, this was what I have been all this time, that it has only taken this long for my true nature to surface because the conditions have finally been satisfactory for my true nature to appear. After all, we ship girls are built as machines imitating human anatomy and consciousness. Remove the human consciousness, and all I am, all we are - we are simple machines. Bloodthirsty, selfish machines who emerge when our weak human selves crack under the pressure and difficulty of hardship and pain.

I suppose in the end, I cannot deny my own actions. Both of my sisters and all of my developers, my creators - they have all seen me at my absolute worst. Shigure-onee-san and Harusame-onee-san have seen for themselves the Samidare that I never knew existed until tonight. A Samidare who cracks when she sees the body of her Teitoku. A Samidare who hurts herself to deal with hardship. A Samidare who loses her mind because she can't cope with the loss of a loved one.

A Samidare who dies and is replaced by another Samidare she herself doesn't even know.

Is it because of shame that I cannot bear to look either of my sisters in the eye? I feel that I could simply place the blame on my own shame and call it a day. But that is too easy. That is the natural reaction that I would have - to be ashamed. But is it really because of shame that I have refused to speak with anyone else this evening, after I convinced Shigure-onee-san and Harusame-onee-san to share their memory files with me? Or perhaps it is fear? But what kind of fear? The fear that I would, without warning, turn into that listless, thoughtless, heartless, soulless Samidare?

Or, going off what the developers hypothesized...say that Kane-sensei was right in her theory that we Shiratsuyu-Class have an inherent disorder in all of us. Shigure-onee-san has already demonstrated it. If you were to count Harusame-onee-san's Abyssal side as Destroyer Princess, then perhaps that could qualify as well. And finally, myself...of course, we still do not know if our other sisters have demonstrated this same disorder, should it exist.

I pray to God that this..."disorder"...is simply a hypothesis. But something tells me that it is not such a convenient answer that I will find with due time.

I touch my right cheek. It has been since reconstructed thanks to the operation I underwent to force-restart my main processing unit to clear its caches and reset all statuses back to nominal. It may feel normal, but every time I dab my palm against my cheek, my skin crawls, because I remember what I myself looked like, when my eyes were black, and my hands were red. I glance down at my hand every so often, thinking that blood will spontaneously appear, but I find my palm clean.

I'm starting to become paranoid. I know that I am, but there is nothing I can do to not feel paranoid.

I do not want to sleep. Seeing the huge hole in my memory is like approaching a huge dark whirlpool in the middle of the ocean. I do not want another such lapse in memory to arise, because I do not want the other Samidare to appear ever again.

I must stay awake. But I want to fall asleep. But I can't...I need to stay awake. That monster cannot come back.

That Samidare is not me. It isn't. I refuse to believe that we are one and the same.

Help me, Teitoku.

Please...


	23. 六月二十日（金）

**六月二十日（金）**

When I woke up today, I found myself sandwiched in between Shigure-onee-san and Harusame-onee-san.

Before I knew it was them who were holding me under the covers, before opening my eyes, I thought the nightmare was still very, very real. I had been dreaming that like yesterday, I was scratching at my cheek so long and so hard that there was nothing of my cheek left but bloodless, mangled skin and tissue. So when I woke up, I had a mild case of sleep paralysis and found myself sweating horribly, scared to even open my eyes, convinced that the heavy weights wrapped around my arms would tear them off as soon as I moved a muscle.

Even when I did realize that there was nothing for me to fear, that they were only my fellow sisters who were protecting me from my jarring nightmare, I was still so scared to do anything. My nightmare-induced paranoia gave me the irrational belief that I was going to get my own sisters involved in my nightmare, and that I needed to get away from them before I would somehow scratch holes into their own cheeks as well. Out of context, I'm sure this sounds very comical; but at that moment, it was a very real fear.

Why is it that I feel that my sense of fear has become very twisted? Because if I put this into perspective, the things that I must do, the tasks and the responsibilities I carry as a ship girl in real life are far scarier than any nightmare that I can dream up. The nightmares, the fears - the things that come with dreams, sleeping - those are not real, because at the end of them all, I will wake back up to where I had fallen asleep in the real world, with nothing to worry about. Whatever is born in my dreams will stay in my dreams, and nothing more. What I must do and what I have been doing in my real life are much scarier because they are very real. Fighting Abyssals, facing injury and perhaps even death - the rational mind can always see that the fears of tangible, possible events must always outweigh the fears of an intangible, impossible nightmare, no matter how absurd or ridiculous the nightmare can become. A nightmare may not kill me, but a shell from an Abyssal certainly may. And the thing is, for me personally, it has. I may not remember the exact time that I died on that day, but I certainly remember the last few moments leading up to it. And that by itself is enough to give me nightmares about it.

But if I am so convinced that real life is infinitely more frightening than anything that I can dream, why was it that I woke up this morning all sweaty, afraid to budge a muscle, and short of breath?

Maybe because the nightmare that I was dreaming actually did happen. It was no doubt a direct continuation from the events of yesterday; if I had not acted in such a...a...a horrifying manner, I do not think this nightmare would have happened, because it would have had nothing to use as fuel to manifest itself. It was not an empty nightmare, whose course of events are only limited to what happens when I sleep. It drew upon something that did happen, with plenty of evidence to confirm its occurrence, and replayed it back to me in a form that I could then nearly physically experience for myself.

In any case, after a few minutes trembling underneath the covers after waking up, I began to cry yet again. I feel that as a ship girl, I should not cry at petty things like this. Nightmares...are only nightmares. Once they happen, they are gone, and I should return to the life that I have. Besides, I have so many other things that I must worry about in the real world. But yet, I felt so vulnerable, even with two of my sisters right by my sides. I was broken down so quickly, so swiftly, by a single nightmare, a single day's happenings, that I could not help that all the months earlier this year that I spent with Teitoku training to become the best ship girl that I can possibly be for him and for my country were immediately put to waste. I thought to myself, you should be stronger than this. After all these battles, after all the pain, after all the training, you let one nightmare come into your head and destroy everything that you and Teitoku worked so hard to build in you. I thought that I had become stronger. I genuinely thought this. But this nightmare has slapped me in the face. It says that I have, in fact, not changed; not even my Kai remodel has made me stronger. I still am, at my core, still that meek, spineless blue-haired schoolgirl whose best asset is to be eye candy for my superiors.

For the first time, I wished nothing more than to simply wither away and disappear from sight. I didn't even want my own sisters to see me, when I was crying like that. Don't look at me, if you have any mercy. I just want to be left alone. Don't look at me when I feel so weak and vulnerable. I can't fight or protect anyone when I am like this. Please, _please_ , don't look at me.

And, to my luck, that was when Shigure-onee-san and Harusame-onee-san woke up too. They immediately saw that I was crying and asked me what was wrong, what they could do for me. I tried to hide my face from them into the pillow. I didn't want them to see me. It was humiliating, utterly humiliating. I would have preferred if they scolded me for crying like a baby to a mere nightmare. It was their sympathy, their kindness, their love that was so unbearable.

At breakfast, however, Shigure-onee-san did inform our developers about the nightmare I had when Losira-sensei asked us if we slept well last night. I didn't want them to talk about it, but I suppose I never told either Shigure-onee-san or Harusame-onee-san not to talk about it. This immediately sent alarm bells, for Losira-sensei grew noticeably worried and called over Big-sensei and Deimos-sensei and asked them if ship girls were supposed to have dreams or nightmares, to which they said no. Once I was done eating, they took me back into the operating room where the chambers are and scanned me again for any anomalies. While I was being scanned, Big-sensei apologized to me for having to scan me again like this, but he explained that ship girls like us aren't meant to have nightmares. Or rather, it was very unlikely for us to have dreams or nightmares. He stated that given the nature of our construction, because we are in fact part machine as well as human, with our computerized senses and cognition, our subconscious nowhere near as prevalent as those of normal human beings', so much so that even having things like dreams or nightmares is enough to set off alarm bells in our developers' heads. Though, that being said, I do still find it rather strange that despite our inability to have dreams or nightmares frequently, we still know what dreams and nightmares are. Big-sensei explained that they'd programmed into us every day knowledge of humans, so we would know things that we otherwise may not and not react badly to them.

That was enough to frighten me to the verge of tears again. It was bad enough when I knew I was having a nightmare; I cannot imagine how I would have reacted if I did not know what a nightmare was.

So not only did I discover that my having a nightmare was an anomaly, I was diagnosed with erratic neural dissonance. Something has gone wrong with my neural signals that travel around my main processing unit, the signals that carry information from one part of my brain to the other. The vast majority of my main processing unit is unaffected, but they discovered small traces of signals that were behaving erratically; some signals were apparently going so haywire that they would completely overshoot their destination and end up in a completely different cache of information, while other signals simply refused to move anywhere, oftentimes stopping in the middle of their paths for no good reason. The amount of erratic neural signals were piling up, enough so that they were causing disruptions in my main processing unit by inducing it to produce an experience that I interpreted as a "nightmare". And when I asked if there was any way they could fix it, they said no. They hadn't expected a problem quite like this to manifest itself. As Big-sensei put it,

"We know how to code parts of your main processing unit, Samidare. We know how to build it and its individual components. But how the hell do we fix individual signals? We can't code _electrons_ or whatever the hell those signals're made of."

It gives me no solace that my disorder, erratic neural dissonance, has an acronym of "E.N.D."

I have spoken enough about this matter; it will do my psyche no favors to continue on. Earlier today, Sanford-sensei called the three of us into a meeting with the rest of the development team of Seal Team Six, a very important meeting, he said. In it, he broke the news to us that there had been an Abyssal attack in the Netherlands in Europe two days ago. As of now, the existence of ship girls like us were no longer classified military secrets; the whole world now know that ship girls, both ship girls like us and Abyssals, exist. Deimos-sensei informed us that due to the Abyssal assault on the Netherlands and the flooding that the country suffered due to their attacks on the floodgates and the water mills that were keeping the ocean out of the country, we would be deployed tomorrow morning to Europe. Germany, Italy, and England already have ship girl fleets of their own; however, their numbers are nowhere near those of ours, and any reinforcements they could receive would be a massive help in case the Abyssals were discovered to be assaulting more positions around Europe.

Naturally, we protested this. Shigure-onee-san said that our primary duty was to protect Japan, our home country. We had not been sent here to then be deployed to a whole new theater of the world. We were strictly here to convince our developers to send us back home with some form of aid with which we could use to repair our fallen sisters and comrades. As unfortunate as the Abyssal attack on the Netherlands was, Shigure-onee-san cited the last two attacks that the Abyssals had launched against our own country and stated that Japan is being targeted as much as Europe was.

That was when they again broke the news to us: Suzukaze and Kawakaze and the others who had sunk at the battle in which Harusame-onee-san, as Destroyer Princess, had attacked us were most likely dead for good. We ship girls can remain in a deceased state for upwards to a week before being repaired without permanent consequence...before it was "too late". That was why earlier in the year, when the base in Okinawa was still active, whenever a ship girl had sunk and her body was returned to base, the developers immediately flew out to us to pick up our bodies as soon as they received word from Teitoku, in order to fulfill that timeline. But as of today, it has been exactly two weeks. Unless the tech teams that Akiyama-san mentioned had managed to figure out how to repair them back to health, repairing them now would be of no avail. By the time we reached the San Pedro base, all of them were beyond help, and our developers knew it. They just didn't tell us.

As though I did not have enough to cry over, the news hit me like a sixteen-inch shell. The weakness that I suffered after my nightmare had done its damage; I nearly fainted when I was told that Kawakaze and Suzukaze could not be repaired, and it was Harusame-onee-san who helped me sit up in my chair. Shigure-onee-san was beside herself with anger. She yelled at our developers, screaming at them about how much we had to endure up until this point, sailing across the entire Pacific Ocean, just the three of us, against who knows how many Abyssals, just to reach us, just to be told only now that we had already failed our objective, and now we were being ordered to go fight in another part of the world that did not concern us.

"We are not only soldiers! We are not just machines!" Shigure screamed at them, "if you wanted machines, you shouldn't have made ship girls! You should have just made more ships if that's what you wanted! We have sisters! We have feelings! We have things we want to fight for! But this isn't one of them! With all due respect, we want to go home! That is not our war; we already have one back home!"

The developers were not fazed. Although Lauren-sensei and Chuck-sensei were sympathetic to us, the others were not as kind as they were. Big-sensei said that while they knew what they were asking of us was completely unfair towards us, if we were not deployed to Europe to help ward against the Abyssal presence there, there may be another incident just like the flooding of the Netherlands. The European ship girls, too, did not have nearly as much combat experience as Shigure-onee-san and I have; it's possible that between just me and Shigure-onee-san, we have more combat knowledge combined than the entire fleets of Europe. Besides, while our patriotism for Japan was understandable, realistically, because the Moebius Four Armament Program focused on equipping Japan with a fleet of ship girls, just sending the three of us to Europe would not significantly impact the operational strength of the rest of our comrades and sisters back home, as strong as we were. Of course, there were the political implications of sending us to Europe without the consent of our government, but our developers promised they would handle those matters. Right now, it was about making sure another Abyssal attack would not happen in Europe; at least back home in Japan, the two Abyssal attacks that we had suffered only damaged bases; meanwhile, in the Netherlands, half the country was being flooded because of the destruction of the floodgates and was in an emergency state with waves of Dutch refugees being pushed into the surrounding countries. Japan had always been much more prepared to deal with Abyssal attacks, even when they did come as surprise attacks, but the same cannot be said of Europe. Our presence there would be instrumental in their defense against future Abyssal attacks.

Then, Deimos-sensei took matters into his own hands. He revealed to us that upon hearing our casualties, the team had immediately gone to work reconstructing our losses, because they knew repairing them was out of the question. For our sakes, Kawakaze and Suzukaze were very near to completion and would be finished over the course of tonight. He laid down an ultimatum that we have to respond to by tomorrow morning, before 0600 hours: we can choose to return to Japan empty-handed and report this mission to Akiyama-san as a failure, or we can choose to deploy to Europe with new copies of Kawakaze and Suzukaze.

It is a very simple but extremely cruel ultimatum, for all three of us - me, Shigure-onee-san, and Harusame-onee-san - can only see this going one way. By this point, as Shigure-onee-san said to us two, it may as well not even be a choice.

This was no ultimatum. This was an order.


	24. 六月二十一日（土）

**六月二十一日（土）**

Today, we submitted our reply. We had no choice; we would not return empty-handed. For the sake of our sisters, we would go to Europe.

Harusame-onee-san asked us to reconsider one last time when we awoke this morning. She asked us if there was not anything we could say or do that would act as a third option to the two that we were given. The problem was, we had already spent many hours before going to sleep talking about just that, and we had come up with nothing. We had no bargaining chips, and we had nothing with which to compromise. How could we? And what would we even compromise? The lives of our own sisters and friends and upperclassmen were at stake. How could we even begin to attempt to compromise the lives of Kawakaze and Suzukaze? What would we even say? What _could_ we have even said? We could think of nothing, and not even eight hours of sleep could help us come up with any ideas.

Both Shigure-onee-san and I already know that Harusame-onee-san has been feeling very disheartened about the course of events ever since her capture and Abyssalization. It has been etched all over her face whenever we discuss or encounter difficult things or scenarios that come up. Whenever we sit with Teitoku and take care of him in his room, when she hugs me because of my nervous breakdown with Teitoku, and when we discuss things about Suzukaze and Kawakaze and our mission, her expression is painfully easy to read. And I figured because we would have no choice but to depart for Europe very soon, I may not have another chance to talk to my sisters like this again, perhaps not for a very long time. So before we left our room, I asked all three of us to sit down and talk things over again.

First, I started with Harusame-onee-san. I pleaded with her to come to terms with whatever feelings she may have about everything that has happened until now. I told her that both Shigure-onee-san and I knew that she held general feelings of guilt, that in both direct and indirect ways, she was able to influence how the course of events over the past two months had gone.

Harusame-onee-san looked very ashamed of herself when I brought this up. When I was done talking, all she said to me was, "I'm sorry".

As though I haven't had my heart broken enough times, hearing my older sister apologize to me like that broke my heart again. Just how far have I fallen, to think it necessary for me to make my own older sister feel so ashamed of herself? That wasn't what I had meant to do. I clarified this to Harusame-onee-san: I didn't want to make her feel bad. I just wanted her to truly recognize that none of everything that has happened so far is her fault in any way.

"But...if...the Abyssals just sank me...and didn't capture me, and...turned me into...one of them, then, then...maybe...none of this would have ever happened..."

My chest tightened up when I heard Harusame-onee-san say that. So much so, that I could not bear to talk. Thankfully, Shigure-onee-san came to my aid and besought her to abandon that mentality. Never is death an acceptable choice to wish for; always striving to live needed to be everyone's priority. Shigure-onee-san stated that precisely because the Abyssals turned Harusame-onee-san into one of them, we were eventually able to recover her and turn her back into her normal self again. We love her too much to accept her mentality. We are not our old warship selves - we are more than that, we are a family of ship girls, not warships. We needed to take care of each other, because there may come a time when no one else would or could be able to. Moreover, since we would most likely be heading for Europe in due time, we would have to steel our resolve and reaffirm our bonds not only as comrades but also as sisters and family members.

Shigure-onee-san's words were able to convince Harusame-onee-san, thank goodness. She shed a few tears and hugged me tightly. She apologized again, but this time for having a foolish mindset. She claimed that she had been too selfish, caught up in her own thoughts of guilt in regards to the course of events over the past two months and her possible roles in them, leading her to neglect the love and care that her sisters in me and Shigure-onee-san presented for her. She promised the two of us that she would do her best in our upcoming operation, to fight for the chance for us all to return home to Japan.

As for Shigure-onee-san, I spoke to her as bluntly as I could, even though I am not good at doing so. I told her that out of all of us, Shigure-onee-san was by and large the strongest of us all, since Yuudachi-onee-san isn't here with us. If in case our operation in Europe turns out badly and there end up being casualties among us, Shigure-onee-san would most likely be able to survive. And if future events would hold this to be true, I asked Shigure, upon returning to Japan, to inform of our superiors of our fates, no matter what our orders. Even if our developers, Seal Team Six, orders us to keep our mouths shut in regards to our activities in Europe, if any one of us sinks and is unable to return home, we would all have to disobey our own developers' orders and inform our Admirals anyway. If in case I am to be a fatality, I asked Shigure-onee-san to please take up my position as lieutenant, at least until everyone could return home to Japan.

Naturally, as I predicted, Shigure-onee-san insisted that she would let not any of us become a casualty, let alone a fatality. None of us would be dying in Germany or anywhere else in Europe, she declared. In fact, if there was anyone who would be most likely to sink, it would be her, instead of being the most likely to survive, because she would fiercely defend all of her sisters and comrades before letting any of us sink before her eyes.

But I continued to plead with her to listen. I revealed my thoughts about her to her, saying that I think that compared to Shigure-onee-san, my rank and uniform is undeserved. I may have more overall combat experience, but Shigure-onee-san is much more powerful, has acquired a second remodel, and can better handle harsh combat conditions. Even my justification of having more combat experience is only a marginal excuse at best; Shigure-onee-san has just as much combat experience as I do, and unlike me, she has the immense power to support it.

But Shigure-onee-san said that she was content with me remaining their commanding officer. She said she believed in me being able to lead us effectively during our time in Europe, but she also cited her own immense power as a double-edged sword: certainly, her protocol and her remodeled strength give her a vastly superior edge to the rest of us when it comes to raw combat talent and capability, but Shigure-onee-san reminded me that power was not the same as leadership. In fact, if anything, power detracts from leadership. How could a bloodthirsty and violent ship girl like herself ever hope to be an officer? My great amount of combat experience and, ironically enough, my experience with death, having been sunk once already during the war against the Abyssals, were strong tools that I could use to aid me in my career as a lieutenant. She even added,

"You've come a long way since we were first constructed, Samidare. I know you can lead us, even if you don't think you can. As your sister and as your comrade, I fully believe in your ability to be our lieutenant. And nothing can change the fact that you are the most important ship girl among us right now. Therefore, I will protect you to the best of my own ability, because my best skill lies in fighting."

I asked Shigure-onee-san if she truly thought if my ability really did lay in being able to lead others. She asked if not me, then who else?

Much more greatly motivated than we had been when we had woken up, we headed to the main laboratory and diagnostics room to give the developers our response.

And to all of our surprises, we found Suzukaze talking with Big-sensei and Deimos-sensei.

Seeing Suzukaze for the first time in weeks made me forget about delivering our response to our developers. I couldn't stop myself from bursting into tears of joy and rushed to embrace my sister Suzukaze. I suppose everything that has happened up until now has forced me to forget about how much I missed my sister Suzukaze, and now that I was finally able to lay my eyes upon a living version of her at last, my weak mind succumbed to my feelings. It was finally something I could cry about and not have to feel so bad crying about...the first time in a long time that I can remember since I have been able to cry out of happiness, rather than sadness or a broken heart.

I ended up making Suzukaze feel quite awkward because of the scene I made while embracing her and crying. Big-sensei explained to us that they had been in the middle of talking with Suzukaze, who had just barely been reconstructed, about all the events that had occurred up until now so that she would be all caught up since the..."other" Suzukaze sank. I couldn't help but cry with pain when I overheard Big-sensei mention Suzukaze's death, and Harusame-onee-san tried their best to comfort me.

Even though I am very glad that Suzukaze is alive again, the fact that Suzukaze had to be rebuilt in a separate body pains me to no end. I know that because we are ship girls, it shouldn't matter if we die and are rebuilt again in different bodies, so long as our rebuilt bodies retain the same amount of memories, or as much as they can retain from the deceased bodies, but I can't help but feel that the Suzukaze that I hugged and cried with is not entirely the same Suzukaze that I knew back home in Japan before she had sunk. Because if this keeps up, soon, there will be nothing to distinguish us from mere clones, machines that could be replaced easily in case something has happened to the first rendition. Even now, I struggle to find the same bonds of sistership that had with Suzukaze before she had sunk with the Suzukaze rebuilt here. There should be no reasonable excuse that I can use to say that she is not the exact same as my sister, but I still find myself searching for one. I desperately wish that this is only due to the fact that I still possess residual feelings of bitterness, sadness, and anger at the fact that Suzukaze had not only sunk, but also the fact that we had been too late to reach our developers to return home in time to get help for our sunken sisters-at-arms, but...I feel that my feelings are much more complicated than this.

But Kawakaze has not been released yet, and when I asked the developers why, Big-sensei said that they were still working on Kawakaze. She would join us tomorrow morning when we are to depart for Germany.

I spent the whole day with Suzukaze, whom the developers even remodeled after constructing her new body. She, having been told about her other body's earlier demise, gladly accompanied me for the whole day. She even apologized to me for leaving me alone all this time by going off and getting sunk first before me.

"I won't ever sink again, Sami," Suzukaze promised me. "Now that I've been remodeled too, I'll keep fightin' with everyone. You just watch."

I hugged her tightly, and she hugged me back too. I truly hope we all return home safely.

I hope you can feel my hand on your cheek, Teitoku. I want you to know that I have and will always love you. I'm sure even like this, you are always watching over me.

Thank you, Teitoku. I love you.

五月雨


	25. 六月二十二日（日）

**六月二十二日（日）**

We have arrived in Berlin, the capital city of Germany, safely. There have been lots of things that have happened today, and I am quite tired, but I still must record these events.

Early this morning, when we awoke to prepare for our flight to Germany, we discovered the reason behind why Kawakaze was unable to join us with Suzukaze yesterday. She had received her second remodel.

While we were all very happy to see her alive again, she has become...very different, in terms of appearance. I do not know what my final opinions of it are. Where should I even start? Her uniform has changed so much. When we first received her, she had her midriff closed, when prior to her remodel, she had it open. She quickly rectified this by opening it back up - she stated herself that it didn't fit her to have her midriff covered. And now, her uniform has been lengthened about the skirt to look almost like a trench coat, or at least it gives the feeling of a trench coat to me. She also has come with the same scarf as Yuudachi-onee-san had received with her own second remodel, but perhaps it is a little different in a few details that I haven't been able to see quite yet. The blue neckerchief that Kawakaze once wore is gone, replaced by a red one. I think I will miss that blue neckerchief; not only did it match my own hair, but I think the red and blue contrast was a wonderful color scheme for Kawakaze, so to see it missing was a bit of a disappointment.

Perhaps her most visible changes were to her physical body. Her hair that was once held in flowing twintails and sidelocks have been instead tied to twirling pigtail braids, thereby shortening her sidelocks, and curiously enough, I have noticed that her braids are pinned along the middle with the same emerald green bobbles that Suzukaze wears on her hip. Its color has gone from a candy apple red to a vivid, luscious apple red, and the gradient peach hue that colored the ends of her hair have made way to a darker gradient red, almost grape-purple, like wine. And like Shigure-onee-san and Yuudachi-onee-san before her, her hair now sport ear flaps in the same places as the two before her, but for some reason, the flaps themselves possess a grayish-white gradient. Now, the only source of blue left on her body must be found in her eyes; her blue pupils are all the remain, the sole survivors of the second remodel process.

Kawakaze, with her second remodel, now boasts a protocol just like me, Shigure-onee-san, and Yuudachi-onee-san. Her protocol is called "Firewater", which is extremely fitting to her image, and just like the name suggests, she wields a significant degree of pyrokinesis and can spawn flames with any part of her body and even spawn flames simply by looking at her target. She demonstrated this for us for the sake of informing her sisters of her new power, and when she activated her protocol, I noticed that her blue eyes turn golden. I suppose even her beautiful blue eyes do not stay permanent, now that she is remodeled.

But the most significant change for me came in the form of her personality. Before, I knew Kawakaze as a rather boisterous, cheerful, and loud sister, a fun-loving little sister who gave the image of a mischievous tomboy, but now, after having talked to her and spent this whole day with her, she seems to have lost the mischievous and boisterous side to her. She is still cheerful and still can and has gotten quite loud, and she still retains her teasing streak and tendency to talk big, but I do think that Kawakaze's personality codex has received a similar treatment that Shigure-onee-san's and Yuudachi-onee-san's personality codexes also received: a modification that sacrificed parts of their original personalities to add in a more serious, perhaps battle-oriented side. Yuudachi-onee-san had once been quite playful and happy-go-lucky before her remodeling; with her second remodel, she lost some of that playfulness; Shigure-onee-san had once been quite shy, much like myself, and always seemed like something was bothering her; with her second remodel, she lost her shyness and gained a significant amount of self-confidence; Kawakaze appears to have undergone a similar change.

That's right...before her remodel, Kawakaze had best been known for her trademark look of smugness. Not once today have I seen her make that old face. Perhaps that is what is missing...

But to everyone's surprise, Shigure-onee-san became furious with the developers. She got so angry with them that it scared everyone, even Kawakaze. When she realized that Kawakaze had underwent a second remodel, she yelled at Big-sensei why they had not decided to remodel me.

I begged Shigure-onee-san to calm down. I asked her why she was getting angry over all of this. Not only did we receive our sunken sister back from the dead (although the stinging fact that she can technically be considered a mere clone still rests heavy in the back of my mind, as it does with Suzukaze), but our developers had been kind enough to even grant her a second remodel, just as they had done with Shigure-onee-san herself and Yuudachi-onee-san. And it wasn't as though getting angry about it for any reason would somehow magically transfer the remodel to me, so why try to dispute what has already happened?

But Shigure-onee-san refused to calm down or listen to me. She yelled at me, too, asking,

"I'm not trying to say that I'm unhappy with Kawakaze's second remodel, but if there was anyone among us who deserved it, it was _you_ , Samidare! _You_ are the most important one among us! _You_ are our commanding officer! _You_ need as much strength and power as possible! _You_ deserved it the most! How could they have not ever thought about that?! Aren't our developers supposed to be _smart?_ And you're telling me they simply _forgot_ about you?!"

She turned to our developers and yelled at them, too, questioning them this same furious inquiry. She demanded to know why I, their in-squad leader, did not receive a remodel and instead let it be wasted on Kawakaze.

The answer she received was:

"We, uh, misplaced Samidare's files. We definitely had it in mind, but, um...we couldn't find them anywhere. Plus, not only did we have Kawakaze's files on hand with us, but we all had a lot of ideas for Kawakaze's second remodel. So we just went with Kawakaze," Big-sensei said rather casually.

I definitely saw a look of pure hatred in Shigure-onee-san's eyes. I could tell that she wanted to rip them apart. I had never seen her so angry, and as though the look in her eyes was not enough, I felt a deep killing intent emanate from her heart. I don't know how a ship girl like me can sense something so primordial like that...maybe it is a special mix of bodily frequencies that Shigure-onee-san's heart seemed to beat that translated into a killing intent that my sisters and I received, but everyone else felt it too, and it scared all of us. I didn't know what Shigure-onee-san would do or how badly she would react, so not wanting to take any chances, I hugged her and begged her profusely to calm down. I pleaded with her that there was no reason to have to take out her anger on anyone about this; this wasn't worth it. Finally, Shigure-onee-san did eventually stand down, but I could tell without a doubt that she was very reluctant to listen to me, and that she only obeyed me because she did not want to hurt my feelings, not because it was wrong to lay a hand on our creators. I think it is safe to say that at that particular moment, she wouldn't have cared about the consequences of her actions, had she herself acted on her feelings.

Just as I managed to convince Shigure-onee-san to calm down, Deimos-sensei, Sanford-sensei, and Hank-sensei entered the room at that moment. Whether or not they had overheard Shigure-onee-san's rant still remains a mystery to us, but they came in carrying a uniform that, much like my own uniform that I had received from our navy admirals back in Japan, was Shigure-onee-san's own uniform that was clearly modified to be an officer's uniform, a black, red, and white set of officer's clothing, complete with rank insignia, medal, and officer's peaked hat. They also brought me an exact copy of the same uniform I had received and worn back home, and when I asked them how they managed to get their hands on it, Deimos-sensei simply smirked and said that they were the ones who designed it. In fact, all of the uniforms that were given to me, Murakumo-chan, Sazanami-chan, Fubuki-chan, and Inazuma-chan were their final parting gifts to the Kaijyou Jietai, for them to give to us in celebration of our ascended positions in the navy.

But I had no time to feel thankful; Shigure-onee-san became wrathful again and initially refused to accept her own ascendance to the rank of Lieutenant, just the same as me. She initially thought that this was the developers' way of placating her, but Big-sensei claimed that even if I had been remodeled instead of Kawakaze, they still planned to promote her for the sake of this mission, so they could not be accused of trying to bribe Shigure-onee-san into accepting Kawakaze's remodel. Shigure-onee-san then said that she would not accept her promotion if I did not at least receive an additional promotion myself, but our developers said that such a feat would be impossible at the moment because even though they were at hostilities with the Japanese navy and government, they still would respect Japanese naval sovereignty in the form of their promotion. Because I was promoted on Japanese soil by Japanese officers, the developers refused to sully my rank by replacing my current rank with an American one. Not to mention, Shigure-onee-san's promotion would only be a temporary one designed to give her on-scene command and authority when we deploy to Germany; she would lose her rank and uniform once our operations in Germany are finished and we return to Japan.

We managed to convince Shigure-onee-san to accept the promotion, and she gave in, though she received it very reluctantly. Our developers offered to throw a quick celebratory ceremony for Shigure-onee-san's sake, but she harshly turned it down. She hasn't worn her uniform yet, though she says she will once the time comes.

Once both Suzukaze and Kawakaze became familiarized with our mission details, we were deployed immediately in civilian clothing. Lauren-sensei and Losira-sensei drove us to the Los Angeles International Airport, where they had booked for us first-class seats on a plane bound for Boston, Massachusetts to board our connecting flight to Berlin, Germany, our final destination point. They gave us all messenger bags armed with sturdy laptops to use as communication tools and whatever else we fancied, fabricated passports and university ID cards to help us through security, extra sets of our uniforms and more civilian clothing and socks, and $500 apiece in American dollars (twenty dollar bills). They also gave us extremely detailed instructions on how to navigate the airports because they knew this was our first time being out in public, outside of our usual naval bases and military installations and thus had little to no exposure to civilian life. So detailed were their instructions that despite this being our first time using a public airport and mingling with a civilian population, we had absolutely no trouble reaching our terminal and boarding our flight. They explained just before they send us off on our own through the initial security checkpoints that we were going through civilian transportation means to keep us out of the eye of American or German military; if we had been taken to Germany via military transport, our cover may be blown, so going by a commercial passenger airliner would help mitigate that.

It may have protected our cover, but very quickly all five of us became uncomfortably aware that we turned into instant centers of attention wherever we went. People stared at us, especially most of the boys and young men. Suzukaze and Kawakaze were the first ones to grasp why: we are, by the standards of ordinary human beings, extremely beautiful. I don't say this to flatter ourselves, it is...the simple truth. I feel so...so bad for saying that, but it is the truth. Plus, to make matters worse, Shigure-onee-san is the only one among us who has normal-colored hair. The rest of us all have very distinctly colored hair: I have bright blue, Kawakaze has flaming apple red, Harusame has very bright pink, and Suzukaze also has dark blue, though it could pass for black if only looked at with mere glances...but nobody only took a glance at us and walked along, at least most people didn't. The vast majority of those who saw us opted to stare or ogle at us for at least a few minutes. We even sensed one or two people who apparently were infatuated with us and trailed us from our initial security checkpoint all the way to our terminal. Kawakaze offered to scare them off, but I told her not to, since we did not want to make a scene out in the middle of a public location such as this.

Once we were able to board our plane for the first leg of our flight, we settled into our very comfortable first-class seats. Kawakaze, Harusame, and Suzukaze were all very excited and stoked to be able to enjoy first-class for the first time, and they marveled at all the luxurious conveniences that come with flying first-class. But once they calmed down and we buckled in for our flight and began to fly, Kawakaze asked Shigure-onee-san if we could all talk together. Once we were all paying attention, she began to apologize to Shigure-onee-san, saying that after having heard about the whole situation and everything that had happened thus far, she, too, would have liked to have me receive my own second remodel over herself.

"We all know Samidare-aneki's worked a lot harder than the rest of us. If I had a choice, I would'a given it to her too, trust me," she said somberly. "I feel bad too. I feel like I've stolen it from her. She's worked and fought so hard over the past six months, she's been around for a lot longer, and she didn't end up dyin' at the naval yards like a buster like I did."

I quickly waved it off and asked Kawakaze to not dwell so much on it. I do admit that receiving a second remodel would be quite nice, seeing how strongly it powers up ship girls like us, but just like our first-class seats, I feel that a second remodel is only a great luxury at best. But more than that, I told Kawakaze that I didn't want her to keep having thoughts like that weigh her down in the back of her mind.

"...sorry, Aneki," Kawakaze still mumbled. It was clear that she was going to have trouble shaking off that feeling, so I stayed with her to prove to her that she had nothing to worry about.

Suzukaze suggested that we start talking about more fun things instead of depressing things like this, and she was successful in distracting us for the remainder of the flight. We spent the whole flight to Boston just being normal sisters like a normal family, talking and laughing all along the way. I get the sense that the developers must have told Kawakaze and Suzukaze what I had gone through with Harusame-onee-san and Shigure-onee-san over the past few weeks, for they both sat with me and talked with me most out of the others, and Harusame-onee-san and Shigure-onee-san seemed perfectly fine with it. I also ended up sharing my English language skill program that I had developed by myself while teaching myself how to speak the language in order to read Teitoku's journal so that Shigure-onee-san and Harusame-onee-san could also begin speaking English too; Suzukaze and Kawakaze had already come equipped with dual-language functionality as a result of their reconstructions.

We spent our flight to Germany from Boston mostly sleeping, for we knew that once we landed in Germany, our operations would begin, so being well-rested would be of critical mission importance. Once we landed, following Lauren-sensei's and Losira-sensei's directions, we found a private black taxi van waiting for us in the circular arrival pickup terminal, and the driver, a casually dressed man with big muscles, introduced himself as Sergeant Jollenbeck and drove us to our final destination, a large, well-to-do home in the outskirts of the capital city. On our way, Sergeant Jollenbeck informed us that our ship weapons would be provided tomorrow by a secret development team in Berlin who has been in charge of providing the German ship girl fleet with their own weapons and auxiliary programs.

We were then received by the residents of this home, a Mr. and Mrs. Wedekind, who had graciously opened up their home to house us for the sake of our operations here in Germany. They introduced themselves as the Chancellor of Germany and his wife - basically, they are the most powerful couple in the nation in terms of individual political power. Harusame and Suzukaze seemed quite nervous that we were being treated so well by such important people, as was I, too, admittedly. But they seem to be very nice people, and they have a baby daughter who is one year old named Retia, and she is very cute, and we all became immediate friends with her. Retia seemed very happy to be our friends - I think it is because she loves the sight of our hair, for she has been running her small itty-bitty hands through all of our hair and staring with marvel at them. It made us all laugh, including her parents. Sergeant Jollenbeck retired for the night, driving the black van away, and Mr. Wedekind said that the Sergeant was part of the nation's renowned counter-terrorism unit, GSG-9, and was a squad leader for the German counter-terrorism forces. I think I will keep his name in mind; I get the feeling we may work closely with him in the near future.

We have only arrived very recently, some four hours ago, so we have been spending this time getting ourselves comfortable in our new home. They even provided us with a large guest room that we would need to share, but of course we do not mind sharing a bedroom together. The blankets they provided us are so comfortable that Kawakaze and Harusame immediately fell asleep for a few moments on them as soon as they laid down on them. Mr. and Mrs. Wedekind even provided for us a quick but hot and delicious late-night dinner of homemade spaghetti with bacon and sliced pieces of bratwurst with sparkling apple cider, and because none of us had eaten anything save for a few fast-food meals at the Logan International Airport, we were extremely grateful for the Wedekinds' generous hospitality.

It is now very late at night, and Kawakaze has been waiting for me to finish typing this for some time now. She said she wants me to come sleep with her...I think she still feels a little bad about the whole remodel incident. Hopefully tonight will convince her that I really do not mind in the grand scheme of things, for we will have much more important tasks ahead of us.

I love you, Teitoku, just as much as I love my sisters. I hope you can someday meet all of them, because they are all wonderful ship girls. I hope that one day, all five of us can join everyone else to serve under you once again.

五月雨


	26. 六月二十三日（月）

**六月二十三日（月）**

Mr. and Mrs. Wedekind stated this morning when we awoke that they had a very important meeting to attend, a congregation of the European Union at the main German government building called the "Reichstag", so they departed very early, almost immediately after serving us breakfast. In fact, so punctual were they that Mrs. Wedekind even cooked breakfast in her work clothes, but their busy schedule still did not prevent them from cooking us a most scrumptious breakfast of golden hashbrowns, sunny-side-up eggs, bratwurst, and sauerkraut. It was our first time having sauerkraut, and almost predictably, Kawakaze and Suzukaze loved the sourness of sauerkraut, Shigure-onee-san did not mind it, and Harusame-onee-san and I did not like it at all. I found it very jarring, as many Japanese foods that we are used to from back home are not known for being sour. Harusame-onee-san and I really did not want to appear rude or ungrateful and were about to force ourselves to eat the sauerkraut, but thankfully Kawakaze noticed our pain and came to our rescue, offering to snag it away from us to relieve us of our burden.

When we arrived in the dining room (which is practically built into the middle of the kitchen area), we found two young women whom we did not see during the previous night, when we had first arrived in the country. Mrs. Wedekind kindly introduced them to us, and to our huge surprise, she introduced them as two of the small German ship girl fleet, who were also living them in their home in Berlin. The taller woman with the long blonde hair is named Bismarck, and as befitting of her stature and mannerisms, she is a battleship. The other girl, also blonde but with twintails, is named Prinz Eugen, a heavy cruiser, who looks remarkably similar to Bismarck to the extent that they could say they were sisters and we would believe it. They certainly look more related than, say, me and my own sisters...the only truly conspicuous physical similarity that we share is our similar heights, perhaps body types too - thin and a little bit lanky. Kawakaze is a little more muscular, and Shigure has a bit of a curvier body, but the differences are small enough to be overlooked. In any case, they welcomed us to Germany and to the home of the Wedekinds that they themselves were also being loaned for the time being, and to my and Shigure-onee-san's great surprise, we were _saluted_ by the German battleship and cruiser. They had been told about our statuses as lieutenants and, holding no conspicuous rank of their own, felt compelled to greet us formally as such, complete with formal military introductions and all, which the two of us quickly asked them not to do, as we were far from being in a formal environment. When Suzukaze asked them how we did not meet them yesterday upon our arrival, Prinz Eugen explained that they and their fellow German ship girls had actually been spending the past two weeks in England in a joint training program with the fleet of British ship girls and Italian ship girls, whom we were also surprised to hear of. More like ten days, Bismarck stated, because they had departed on the 13th of June.

We were also joined by the rest of the German fleet (who also saluted Shigure-onee-san and I), led by the German aircraft carrier Graf Zeppelin and Mr. Wedekind, who was following his daughter Retia as she ran into the kitchen. We enjoyed another round of introductions as we acquainted ourselves with one another: the aforementioned Graf Zeppelin, the two German destroyers Z-1 Leberecht Maass and Z-3 Max Schultz, and finally U-511, the German submarine, and we all had breakfast together and saw Mr. and Mrs. Wedekind off. Embarrassingly, Harusame-onee-san and I both bid the parents farewell using our habitual Japanese " いってらっしゃい!" without thinking, so we both had to spend a very awkward minute explaining to them what it meant and why we said it. Very fortunately, our newly made German friends simply laughed it aside, citing it as a simple clash of cultures. They themselves had experienced it during their brief training regime in Britain, Max confessed, so any accidental cultural slip-ups we might make are completely understandable.

After the Wedekinds had left, the German aircraft carrier, who asked that we simply call her Graf for the sake of simplicity (Lebe and Max also asked us to call them these respective names for the same reason), made us all coffee. She initially served it to us black and without any additional ingredients, and remembering that I had drunk some black coffee once or twice before in the offices back at Atsugi Naval Air Station, I tried some myself. I think I am growing a little bit more used to the bitterness of black coffee, and I was able to drink the whole cup without any sort of sweetener or creamer, which Shigure-onee-san noticed and marveled at, asking me when and where I had learned to drink coffee straight black. When I explained my acquired taste for black coffee, Shigure-onee-san figured that I would be the type of person to put lots and lots of creamer into my coffee. So I tried another cup of coffee, this time with sweetener and creamer, and it was indeed very delicious. But, in case there must come a time when I need to imbibe coffee without anything else, I am glad that I am able to do so.

Coffee aside, as Prinz Eugen and Yuu kept little Retia busy, the rest of us sat around the large dining table in the middle of the kitchen and discussed the current events and current political and military climate of the continent. The German ship girls filled in the details that the sitreps given to us by Seal Team Six did not provide, so now we have been made much more aware of just how urgent the situation is. They explained to us the importance and urgency of the meeting that mr. and Mrs. Wedekind were attending today, and the next meeting that would be much more important than the one they had today that would take place two days from now.

The most frightening things that we were told of were the civilian massacre in the German town of Hanover and, of course, the flooding of the Netherlands at the hands of the Abyssals during their own surprise attack on the Dutch coast. Shigure-onee-san looked visibly agitated when Graf-san went into detail about the exact percent of the country was now underwater and other such catastrophic statistics. At least we were told that civilian losses managed to be kept to a minimum, and those who were evacuated would be able to return home once the dikes were repaired and the water levels receded; however, Shigure-onee-san asked how those civilians would be able to rebuild their homes and reclaim their possessions after the waters were cleared away, and Graf-san stated with brutal honesty that most likely, those civilians would have to rebuild their lives over from scratch, and that there was nothing we ourselves could do for them; we would simply have to rely on other people to help them recover, for our duties and responsibilities were elsewhere.

But after all had been said and done, Bismarck-san insisted that we do not worry about any of the political events going on, for we had Mr. and Mrs. Wedekind to rely on to handle such matters; being the Prime Minister of Germany and his wife, the Wedekinds have significant power in the European political theater and can make many things happen, and they were also very well practiced in their careers. We only needed to focus on our own duties, so if there ever was anything that we ourselves cannot do or are barred from doing because of any sort of political reason, all we needed to do was refer to Mr. and Mrs. Wedekind and inform them of our problems and let them take care of the rest.

After this, when they asked if we had any questions for them, Suzukaze immediately asked where everyone else was in their fleet. Surely they had more than what was gathered here? But Lebe explained sadly that the girls who were seated before us are all that there is to the German ship girl fleet. They had in fact been blueprinted by Seal Team Six, by the very same people and team who were responsible for our own creation, the creation of the entire Japanese fleet, but they had been secretly outsourcing their work to three other countries, Britain, Germany, and Italy, for currently unknown reasons to allow them to build up small fleets of naval personnel themselves. Bismarck-san theorized that this may be the result of Seal Team Six foreseeing a possible Abyssal presence in Europe and thus prepared for it by having the British, German, and Italian fleets built as a buffer against possible Abyssal attacks here in Europe, but this was, of course, unconfirmed, as none of the European fleets apparently have any sort of regular contact with their original developers - I suppose our own fleet back home no longer have any sort of regular contact with our developers, either.

We figured that trying to ask them any more questions regarding their conceptions and fleet creations would be out of place here, so our questions were limited to somewhat trivial ones, like questions regarding the Wedekind family and their opinions on their current living conditions and the overall situation as a whole. Of note, Bismarck-san and and Max appeared very enthusiastic in the inevitable war against the Abyssals, saying that they would do whatever it would take to defeat them and prosecute the masterminds behind their operations.

Once our small trickle of questions evaporated, the topic of our conversation soon switched to that of naval training, as Lebe and Prinz Eugen served us snacks, small iced donuts called "Spritzkuchen" and a sort of small cake made of two chocolate layers and very tasty cream in between, called "Milch-Schnitte", along with some more apple cider from a cooled bottle stored just in case in the refrigerator by Mr. Wedekind for us to drink at our leisure. Admittedly, to our chagrin, my sisters and I were quite distracted by the snacks. Although I did find them to be a little too sweet at first, eventually I was able to enjoy them by taking very small bites at a time, and that way I was able to handle the sweetness. Kawakaze and Suzukaze seemed to have absolutely no trouble wolfing them down, however, but I guess that's just to be expected. Our new German friends were very happy to see that we liked German snacks.

As our distraction faded, Bismarck-san formally requested that I teach them everything that I knew about anti-Abyssal warfare, which greatly flattered me, because the concept of a battleship asking such a thing from a mere destroyer like me is beyond my own feasible comprehension. Regardless, Bismarck-san stated that while she may understand that I might want to refrain from teaching them certain things for the sake of having our own Japanese fleet keeping an edge over the rest of the world's ship girl fleets, she very much so wanted to learn everything my sisters and I had to offer. The German fleet, as we could plainly see, was very small compared to our Japanese fleet, she asserted, so what they very sorely lacked in numbers, they could only make up for in the quality of their tactics and individual performances. Bismarck-san also declared that it was her intention to have the German fleet personnel navy to become the greatest of the triumvirate of fleets here in Europe, and the British fleet was their clear competitor for this very title. We were exactly what they needed to compete effectively with them for it, and only under our tutelage could they achieve this status.

Shigure-onee-san immediately spoke up before I could give my own reply, saying very clearly that she did not like Bismarck-san's attitude regarding our joint cooperation. She said that Bismarck-san sounded like she only saw us as stepping stones for her own personal glory or for the reputation of the German fleet as a whole. Because of this, Shigure-onee-san said that she could not easily bring herself to believe in the conviction that the German fleet has in the war against the Abyssals, if they truly only ever saw training as merely a way to gain fame and status. Thankfully, Bismarck-san clarified that such was not how she intended to come off as and quickly apologized, nullifying Shigure-onee-san's initial suspicion, and she went on to state in addition that their desire to grow stronger as ship girls was entirely for the sake of protecting their country and their continent. Fame and glory were nice, but obviously those things were secondary to what really mattered and what is really at stake. Bismarck-san besought our tutelage; we were their only chance to truly further their own skills because we were battle-tested ship girls with real, proven experience against the Abyssals. Their training with the British was nice, and their battle against the Abyssals had also taught them a great deal, but not only was their training with British ship girls who themselves did not have any real battle experience against the Abyssals prior to the assault on the Netherlands, making that particular training program not too important in the grand scheme of things, but both the British and German fleets made many mistakes and fought very inefficiently, in Graf-san's words. Their one battle against the Abyssals had shown them just how much they needed to learn, and perhaps all of them had only survived due to the fact that the one part about the battle that they were proud of was their careful, precise coordination with the British girls.

Well, Bismarck-san did not need to go out of her way to tell us all this because it was my intention to do just that. I truly feel sympathetic towards our German friends because this is literally all they have; they do not have a great fleet like we do, and I myself know how difficult our very first battles against the Abyssals were, back earlier this year when I was merely a fresh destroyer under Teitoku's command. And God forbid anyone experience the horror of dying as a ship girl. Now I really do want to help our new friends become as strong as they can get. I may not be a confident officer, but for their sake, I do want to help them as much as I can. I spoke with this privately with Shigure-onee-san in Japanese, and Shigure-onee-san, while showing a few weak signs of skepticism, quickly gave in and agreed. She, too, felt sympathetic for our German friends for the same reasons I am, so I happily accepted Bismarck-san's request and received a nice big hug Yuu. We all celebrated our new bonds of friendship with a full round of apple cider toasts.

For the rest of the day, we interacted with our new friends, getting to know them as much as we could and playing with Mr. and Mrs. Wedekind's daughter Retia in the meantime. I also found out to my slight surprise that Kawakaze's scarf is not actually a scarf, but a cape. I found out when Max was talking with Kawakaze about how much she admired my sister's cool-looking uniform, so Kawakaze was showing off her cape to her and I happened to notice. Max pouted about how she was a little bit indignant towards our developers about how we Japanese ship girls were given such dignified uniforms while she and her sister Lebe were stuck with plain uniforms that barely covered their rears, so oftentimes they had to wear either longer skirts or spats beneath their default skirts to appear more acceptable in public. We couldn't come up with a suitable response for that.

I had lots of fun today here in Germany, Teitoku, but I know that harder times will fall upon us very soon. But for now, I just want to spend time with our new German friends and make sure we all make memories that can last us our whole lifetimes.

I love you, Teitoku.

五月雨


	27. 六月二十四日（火）

**六月二十四日（火）**

It is as though we have not had enough surprises. Today, even Seal Team Six, our developers, decided to pay us a visit, all the way out here in Germany, arriving at our new home, the Wedekind household, just as we were making breakfast.

Mrs. Wedekind, with whom we were cooking breakfast, along with Graf-san and Prinz-san, explained to us that they had in fact attended the meeting that she and her husband were a part of yesterday, though the way in which she said "attended" implies that our developers perhaps did not simply "attend" it - but we asked no questions on the matter. As they had arrived just in time before we started serving breakfast, Mrs. Wedekind graciously invited them to dine with us as well, which they gladly accepted; all of them looked quite tired, and Big-sensei would later mention during breakfast that all of them who had arrived here in Germany (Kane-sensei and Chuck-sensei apparently stayed behind in America to take care of domestic responsibilities of the team) had stayed up the whole night before to help their German branch, called the _Wunderwaffe_ Division, produce our armaments here. It would appear that our developers couldn't be bothered with shipping our equipment with themselves and instead contacted Wunderwaffe to begin construction of our equipment, finishing what they started upon their arrival. And that was their main reason for showing up so suddenly here in Germany, to deliver us our equipment, including new ones for the German fleet whose stock equipment had mostly gotten heavily damaged in their prior battle against the Abyssals. Er, I should correct myself here - they had come to the Wedekinds' house to inform us that our equipment was now ready and that they would take us to over to the Wunderwaffe facilities in order to have us try out our new equipment and some special virtual simulation programs that they had been spending the last few weeks writing specifically for our joint training sessions with the German fleets, and perhaps later on with the British and Italian fleets, if time permits.

Seeing how much my sisters and I were enjoying the luxurious food our new German friends and our handlers are spoiling us with, Sanford-sensei kept teasing us about how much we would've regretted not coming to Europe, because then we'd never be able to taste good German cuisine. In retaliation, Suzukaze asked them why they didn't just fly in with us to Germany if they were going to end up coming here anyway, and they gave their reason regarding their virtual simulation program creations for us. Initially they were planning on actually handing them to us to take with us to Germany during our flight here, but they had run into several unforeseen bugs and glitches with the program while they were running a few last beta phases on it, prompting them to go back and fix the bugs.

Mr. Wedekind asked our developers as well how they had known about the emergency EU meeting that took place yesterday, and our developers simply replied that long story short, they had insider contacts with every single major European political system and military because of all their prior missions and operations over the years during their time as an elite counter-terrorism unit. They had their methods, they said _very_ simply. Such words sound very scary...it sounds like they really are so much stronger and more powerful than we may think they are. We had heard a little bit about counter-terrorism units from our German friends, like the local GSG-9 unit, learning a little about their presence and their roles, and their relation to Mr. and Mrs. Wedekind. In particular, they talked about the sergeant we met the other night, the man who drove us from the airport to our new home, Sergeant Jollenbeck, and his affiliation with the German ship girl fleet. But Seal Team Six just sounds like they are on another level entirely. At least GSG-9 didn't sound like they were flying around all over the world, undertaking a diverse variety of missions and operations ranging from building fleets of android naval personnel like us to interrupting very important meetings like a European Union meeting; just how powerful are our developers, exactly? Perhaps we may never truly know these extents - perhaps we should never wish to know.

After breakfast, like yesterday, Mr. and Mrs. Wedekind left the house for work. This time they took their daughter, little Retia, with them, because we soon left the house afterwards, both the German fleet and us, with our developers to the secret Wunderwaffe facilities in the outskirts of the capital city. There, they introduced us to the virtual simulation program that they talked about this morning at breakfast time, which is called "A.L.M.A.", short for "Assisted Live Materialization Asset", which came in a small collar chassis for us to wear around our necks. They have small wires with ear-shaped earphones that clip onto the backs of our ears and transmit the program data to us for us to download and install into our sensory programs. This allows us to run a virtual reality simulation program on the spot wherever we want, creating anything from Abyssal enemies to our own loadouts and weaponry. But for the purposes of our training, we were brought to the Wunderwaffe facilities because the German team had specifically prepared for us a very large underground room, one that is as big as our transforming wateryard in the middle of Atsugi Naval Air Station that we used for our own naval practices on the days of the week when we did not fly out to Yokosuka Naval Yards for training. Because the program could not fully simulate the experience of fighting on the water, our developers had our training room flooded so that our training could be as genuine as possible. And that's how we started training with our new German friends.

The good thing about working with our new German comrades is that when Shigure-onee-san and I got to work going over their combat strategies and individual talents, we could immediately grasp their strengths of combat. For one, every single German ship girl is incredibly talented and disciplined. Maybe it is only because there are only six of them, but on average, if I were to rate their abilities on numerical scales, they would far outperform even our own fleet girls back home in Japan. Their accuracy, sea movement, fleet maneuvers, and evasion tactics have all been drilled so much that we didn't even think it necessary to start them off with basic drills and training because they would be a waste of time. Even when we ran progressively more and more difficult simulation programs for individual ship girls, every one of our German friends cleared them easily. One-on-threes, one-on-fours, all the way up to one-on-eighteens (claimed by Prinz-san, surprisingly enough) - the German fleet, however small, truly is more than capable of taking on Abyssal fleets many times their size. Bismarck-san truly was not lying when she insisted that fleet tactics and anti-Abyssal strategies were all that they needed to become a potent fleet in their own right. This meant that we could get straight to discussing fleet tactics and practicing them for the rest of the day.

Unfortunately, their core weakness emerged as we began to discuss what they had trouble with or were lacking, their fleet tactics and anti-Abyssal information. All of the German ship girls demonstrated a resistance to our introduction of our own time-tested and battle-proven strategies if they did not seem intuitive or straightforward enough. While all of them showed an extent of this, Bismarck-san, perhaps not surprisingly, was the most critical of our strategies. She confronted us with brutal honesty about what she thought about our tactics, pointing out the flaws she seemed to see in them and constantly suggesting modifications to them. At several points Suzukaze herself became a little annoyed with Bismarck-san, even at one point going so far as to tell her to shut up and listen to us who were her instructors, but thankfully Kawakaze dragged Suzukaze away before any lasting harm could be done.

But this being said, fortunately for Shigure-onee-san and me, we managed to slowly change our German friends' minds about our tactics by simply being patient with them and insisting that they try them out for themselves via simulation. For example, one of the few fleet tactics the Germans had was to send Bismarck-san in first, leading the fleet formation, with Prinz-san to back her up and have Lebe-chan and Max-chan cover the two side flanks, along with Yuu-chan to cover their rear flank. This tactic was apparently in place before Graf-san was constructed, so now that Graf-san was here, she was placed behind Prinz-san, sending out air support as per needed. They basically believed that having Bismarck-san be the center of attention for the formation was the most important because she herself could draw much of the incoming fire and tank much of the incoming damage in order to divert possible fire away from the more fragile destroyers and carrier. While this in itself is a sound strategy, this will not work in a standard naval fight because eventually, Bismarck-san will be damaged too quickly, too fast into the fight to be able to sustain her firepower over the course of the entire battle. This was apparently exactly what happened off the coast of the Netherlands, on the day they battled the Abyssals who destroyed the dikes in the country to flood it. By leading the charge, Bismarck-san sustained very heavy damages and needed to be bailed out by the British fleet, who also in turn took heavy damage themselves trying to make sure she survived the fight. The tactic we taught them instead was to rely more on Lebe-chan and Max-chan. They really undervalued the potential of destroyers and their roles in the fleet - not everything as translated perfectly over from our own warship counterparts from the past to our ship girl selves; we destroyers have the power to dismantle entire fleets at once using our innate strengths as destroyers: speed, quick boost recharge times compared to the rest of the warship types, and fast-reloading weapons.

Shigure-onee-san and I demonstrated for them the power of destroyers in order to have the German ship girls change their minds: we simulated a battle in which the two of us engaged an Abyssal fleet of ten destroyers, five light cruisers, three heavy cruisers, and one battleship. We worked together to eliminate the destroyers first, the Abyssal destroyers being the weakest targets. Then, Shigure-onee-san, being more aggressive in her fighting style, distracted the cruisers while I stayed afar while taking accurate shots at the lone battleship, whittling down her constitution slowly over time but always having at least two barrels loaded so that I could fire covering rounds to help Shigure-onee-san out in case she got caught in a hard spot. By keeping her movements unpredictable and her targeting even more so, Shigure-onee-san, with her vicious and brutal fighting style, incorporated plenty of melee attacks, always on the offensive even if all of her weapon barrels were reloading. She took part in this simulation without even using the special assault rifle that was given to her at the time of her second remodel, for the sake of having the simulation be more relatable to our German friends. Shigure-onee-san was the only one who ended up taking damage, and she only got hit by a grand total of two shells, though they were heavy cruiser shells that did a lot of damage. Even though, we got our point across, and we used this simulation to help them rethink their tactics and shift the center of their strategies more onto Lebe-chan and Max-chan.

That was as far as we managed to get today, since we practiced nothing but helping Lebe-chan and Max-chan become more integral parts of their fleet. When we returned home to find Mr. and Mrs. Wedekind back home early and already having dinner made for us, Yuu-chan came up to me and thanked me for doing so much to help her friends get stronger. I said it was the least I could do to help a fellow fleet in our collaborative effort to defeat the Abyssals and keep the whole world safe from their influence.

But I, too, have learned a lot today. It's not just our German friends who need to rethink their strategies; Bismarck-san has pointed out flaws that I never thought about, and because anything can happen in a battle, those flaws need to be reconsidered so that our tactics have as few holes in them as possible. Teitoku, I'm starting to think that our diversion here to Europe may not be so bad as I thought.

I love you, Teitoku.

五月雨


	28. 六月二十五日（水）

**六月二十五日（水）**

We spent the whole day training today as well. Mr. and Mrs. Wedekind had to get up early in the morning today to depart for London for another very important meeting, and Sanford-sensei, Deimos-sensei, and Losira-sensei departed with them to escort them there incognito while Big-sensei and Lauren-sensei stayed behind with us to help us with our training.

Lebe-chan came up to me today and confessed to me that her and Max-chan's biggest problem with the strategies we were teaching them and having them drill yesterday was that both she and her sister were not strong enough to make those strategies viable in a real battle. Or, that was what they thought. Lebe-chan said that while she did not know whether it was because of the vastly superior amount of battle experience that Shigure-onee-san and I had or because we were simply better constructed, she knew for certain that neither her sister Max-chan nor she could match the same amount of strength or combat prowess that Shigure-onee-san had shown in our simulated demonstrations yesterday. Perhaps if we could teach them strategies that did not rely so heavily on such aggressive combat tactics, they would greatly prefer those.

Max-chan also joined us when she saw us speaking together, adding that my tactics yesterday are based on the assumption that a fleet has a sufficient number of destroyers to make the tactic work. Shigure-onee-san and I, she observed, were only able to make our demonstration work with only the two of us simply due to the sheer amount of aggression Shigure-onee-san was able to put up, in conjunction with our clearly superior battle knowledge and experience. If she and Lebe-chan were to try to replicate our feat, they would never be able to do it. Fighting like Shigure-onee-san, Max-chan admitted, was a little bit much for them; watching my sister fight, to them, was like watching a mad hound get unleashed onto the enemy, and while Max-chan clarified that she meant no harm by wording her opinion like that, she just couldn't bring herself to behave the same.

I realized that there was truth to their words. Certainly the tactics and strategies that I know very well and have performed with my comrades back when we were all stationed in Okinawa perhaps may have only worked due to the simple fact that there were a great number of us sortieing all at once, fighting in the same battlefield all at once. I did agree that I neglected this aspect and overlooked it, forgetting about the fact that there are only two German destroyer ship girls in existence, Lebe-chan and Max-chan. However, I did tell them that calculated and reactive aggression was by far the most effective overall battle strategy against the Abyssals. Perhaps it was not necessary to fight exactly like Shigure-onee-san, but I did insist that Lebe-chan and Max-chan play a more forward role in their fleet. They were the ones who needed to score the highest amount of kills, the largest number of enemy units sunk, because then, that would mean that they were shooting down the enemy destroyers and planes, the battleships' and carriers' biggest threat due to their overwhelming numbers and potential to swarm a position in the fleet.

So today, I had Suzukaze, Harusame-onee-san, and Kawakaze lend me their effort and help train Lebe-chan's and Max-chan's fleet movement to get them to become accustomed to fighting close-quarters and practice their movement and short-range dodging. Meanwhile, Shigure-onee-san and I spent time with our other German friends to discuss more fleet tactics we could teach.

Graf-san asked if there was any centralized carrier strategies we used in our fleets that she could implement, so we taught them what we knew. Unfortunately, many of the carrier tactics and fleet maneuvers we knew involved two separate groups of carriers pincering a larger enemy force with two partitioned air waves, so teaching Graf-san those obviously wouldn't benefit her. But we did know a few that Souryuu-senpai used to use when we deployed with her. In a situation where a fleet only has a single carrier to rely on for air superiority, the most important thing that carrier must do is deploy as many recon planes as she can. Even if air superiority cannot be established with a lone carrier, the next most important alternative is to acquire as much battlefield information as possible, and thankfully, Graf-san did just that during their last live battle against the Abyssals, so we did not have to instruct her on the merits of this. Graf-san did ask us if there was a proper way to deploy her recon planes, however, because when she did so over off the coast of the Netherlands, she had sent them straight towards the enemy, because she wanted to spot the enemy as quickly as possible to give her comrades the coordinates of the enemy's position and to allow herself to launch attack planes as soon as possible as well.

Shigure-onee-san and I both said nearly at the same time that that was the incorrect way to deploy recon planes. This is only acceptable in the most dire of circumstances, for example, when a friendly fleet or ship girl is stranded and is surrounded heavily by enemy presence and is in danger of imminent sinking if quick action is not taken. In every scenario when the fleets are first engaging one another in battle, it is of utmost importance for the carriers to deploy their planes deliberately and thoughtfully. Even if they cannot attack, reconnaissance planes are still crucial to the outcome of the battle because they provide constant information. Our developers have constructed our planes to be able to provide live feeds directly back to their home carriers so that the carriers themselves can see exactly where the enemy is at all times, in real time. In addition, because recon planes can last much longer than fighter or bomber planes by simply cruising at elevations safe above regular combat heights, it is almost always a good idea to keep the recon planes high above the enemy fleet, where they are safely out of feasible range of enemy anti-air capabilities and can still provide live feeds over enemy positions. So in order to deploy recon planes correctly, Graf-san needed to launch them at high angles and preferably to the sides so that the planes both have the proper angles and the space to be able to climb their way up to the heights mentioned and begin scouting the enemy. Being able to spot the enemy quickly is a welcome advantage, yes, but keeping the planes themselves safe and relevant throughout the entire battle is a much greater advantage over time.

But because Graf-san really prioritized being able to spot the enemy quickly, I suggested that Graf-san only send out one or two recon planes to seek out the enemy positions as fast as possible, and then deploy the rest of her recon planes as we'd suggested. That way, Graf-san would get a rough idea where the enemy forces are located and relay the information to the rest of her fleet while they waited for the rest of the recon wave to get into position so that the fleet can have something to work with. Graf-san said she was thoroughly impressed with our vast combat knowledge that even covered carrier tactics. "As expected of Japanese naval strategy!" she even said. I felt a little flattered by this, because I thought this was just basic carrier knowledge when it came to the proper use and handling of reconnaissance planes - I'd seen Souryuu-senpai and Akagi-senpai always do this. Perhaps I cannot be too judgmental, for while these tactics may be commonplace and mundane to me and my sisters, our German friends may not see them the same way, simply because they have not yet had many chances to learn from others or even by themselves through brute combat force.

Beyond recon plane strategies, Shigure-onee-san also taught Graf-san the importance of controlling her airplanes directly. Carriers can give individual orders to individual planes that they launch, but the problem that new carriers have is that they neglect to control their planes and instead either focus too much on trying to maintain battlefield observations through their recon planes or worrying about keeping themselves safe. By neglecting to babysit their own planes, carriers will unwittingly but wastefully allow their precious planes to get shot down by enemy anti-air fire when they could have escaped such fates. Fighter planes have this problem of getting shot down needlessly simply due to their coded nature: because fighter planes attack the enemy with machine guns, their combat presence is much more pronounced than torpedo or dive bombers, who simply release their payloads and fly away back to their home carriers to be resupplied with additional payloads, so their chances of becoming shot out of the sky are, beyond the initial approaches, negligibly low. Graf-san needed to practice controlling her attack planes individually in the heat of battle so that her fighter planes could engage key targets at crucial times, because much of the time, the combat threat of fighter planes, even if they cannot sink an enemy Abyssal in one shot like bombers can, are such that the enemy will almost always prioritize their destruction if they get the chance. So having them fly circles around the enemy fleet threateningly and simply keeping them operational and constantly within conscious vision and the outer ranges of the enemy is almost always more beneficial than simply having them attack blindly into the enemy fleet. This way, when Graf-san's fleetmates were ready to make a coordinated push against the enemy fleet, Graf-san could have a myriad of attack strategies with her fighters: she could use them to open up the push by softening up the enemy fleet's defenses and distract them while her ally ship girls got into position to strike, or she could coordinate her fighters to charge at the enemy fleet at the same time as the ally ship girls so that the Abyssals will have a tough time coordinating precision strikes against the push, or have them execute a delayed assault in order to directly support the ally ship girls engaging the enemy fleet. Whichever the case, Graf-san would need to learn and practice how to micromanage her air forces to maximize their efficiency and combat impact. Not surprisingly, Shigure-onee-san and I helped the German fleet train their carrier so that she could begin practicing her micromanagement skills, and I am very happy to say that her progress has been amazing so far today.

Once training was over for today, Graf-san lamented our absence before their joint training program with the British fleet. She claimed to have learned so much more in the two short days we have spent here in Berlin thus far than the ten days spent in cold Northern Britain, where all they did was drill all day, every day. While it was admittedly nice to drill to keep their combat discipline honed, Graf-san said that she preferred learning strategies and tactics, something the British ship girls seemed notably unwilling to do. Being able to have us Japanese ship girls as allies and be kind enough to be willing to teach others their own tactics was truly a blessing, Graf-san stated firmly, and Bismarck-san also joined in on her flattery as well.

"As long as we are all able to fight well, it will have been well worth our time and effort," Shigure-onee-san said, and I agreed. We shouldn't have to feel like we need to hide anything if we are to be friends, even more so now that the threat of Abyssals here in Europe is very real.

I have to wonder if this is how you would have trained us if you decided to keep instructing us like you did during our first few weeks in Okinawa, Teitoku. Maybe you wouldn't have, but I can't say I'm not curious.

I love you, Teitoku.

五月雨


	29. 六月二十六日（木）

**六月二十六日（木）**

Graf-san approached me this morning before breakfast time and informed me that she wished to learn whatever advanced carrier tactics I happened to know from me today. After the lessons from yesterday, she stated that she had spent a few hours rethinking the basics of her fleet movements and actions during the starting phases of a battle and incorporating the tips that we had mentioned yesterday, so Graf-san insisted that she was ready to begin learning the more complicated stuff. She asked if there were such strategies that our fleet carriers back home in Japan used that could potentially win battles all by themselves or otherwise have carriers assume a central role in a fleet attack.

I told her that due to the nature of carriers in anti-Abyssal warfare, it was rare for our carriers to come up with or execute strategies that saw them assume an aggressive role or a tide-shifting role in a battle. Our carriers strove to fight in conjunction with the fleet, supporting their actions rather than coming up with opening gambits or pushes themselves - but there were a few strategies made by Hiryuu-senpai and Taihou-senpai, though one of them they had merely discussed but never had a chance to drill or execute in combat. So we sat together and discussed them as we ate breakfast and during our way back to the training facility.

One of the more advanced carrier tactics I had seen Hiryuu-senpai pull off with Souryuu-senpai was what they called the "phantom air fleet" trick, and they actually pulled this off successfully a few times before stopping in case the Abyssals managed to find out what they were doing. Basically, Hiryuu-senpai and Souryuu-senpai would launch a bunch of spare recon planes that they felt they could afford to lose towards the predicted direction of the enemy. As soon as the recon planes sighted the enemy fleet, however, the carriers would order their recon planes to revert back to their miniature sizes that they turn themselves into whenever they return home and touch down on their respective flight decks. Because carrier-based planes can glide with the wind currents high in the air while in their miniature state, the fleet of recon planes can stealthily glide towards the enemy fleet without being detected on radar or spotted with the naked eye until they are close enough to be identified as an incoming air fleet but still be far enough away that they would not be immediately identified as recon planes. The trick with this strategy, Souryuu-senpai said, was to have the recon planes glide down to a height where once they were detected, their presence would seem like a sudden onslaught of attack planes flying in to launch a surprise attack to the enemy fleet. Once the recon plane wave was close enough, the carriers would order them to revert back into their full sizes again, and the recon planes would all fly at maximum speed towards the enemy and then break formation once they got close enough to avoid incoming anti-air fire. By this point, the Abyssals would identify them as reconnaissance planes and be left wondering why a bunch of unarmed recon planes just flew straight at them. But do this enough times, and Souryuu-senpai and Hiryuu-senpai were able to sink an entire Abyssal fleet by themselves by throwing in a surprise air fleet that actually did drop bombs and torpedoes on everything because the Abyssals simply thought they were going to be another recon plane wave. In another instance that they tried this tactic, the Abyssal fleet they targeted did survive the surprise bombing run, but because the carriers kept using their recon plane wave to stand just at the fringes of their radar detection range while the planes kept alternating between gliding and full-size flying, the Abyssal fleet was struck with paranoia that the next time those recon planes flew at them, they wouldn't be recon planes at all, but instead another devastating airstrike.

Graf-san was listening quite keenly. It flatters me still that a strong, well-disciplined carrier like Graf-san would give me so much respect and attention simply over discussing battle tactics. She even went so far as to take notes from my words with a notepad and pencil, even though we ship girls have no need to use external peripherals when we have internalized word documents and word processing files. She was writing in German, so I couldn't read what she was writing, but Graf-san noticed me trying to read her notes and said simply that she was thinking very deeply about the strategies I was saying and dissecting them to remove any potential flaws and optimize them as best she could. Graf-san is so diligent...I think I'm a little envious of how much she can concentrate on her duties.

Another advanced carrier strategy - although this is more of a general fleet strategy, but this counts because it requires a carrier to assume a central role - was to have a strong carrier individually assign each friendly ship girl her own escort fighter plane. I warned Graf-san that there were so many possible things that could go wrong with this strategy that it was probably not even worth informing her of this; the sole reason why I felt Graf-san could make some use out of it was the fact that the German fleet is so small she can probably easily micromanage five other fighter planes at once. Akagi-senpai had done this just once, but she was able to use it to great effect. By assigning a group of fighter planes to individual ship girls, a carrier could deliver aerial covering fire and give her allies an unprecedented degree of protection, to the point where the ship girls being escorted can simply rely on their escort fighters to ward off unwanted interruptions to their own attack plans. Akagi-senpai did this for Suzuya-san, Murakumo-chan, Hatsuharu-chan, Hibiki-chan, Kitakami-san, Ooi-san, Sendai-san, and Wakaba-chan all at once for one of our sorties, if I remember correctly, and by each having their own escort fighters, they were able to force one-on-one engagements with Abyssal cruisers and even battleships or otherwise take fights that were highly in their favor without worrying too much about other Abyssals joining the fight to skew the balance out of their favor.

Obviously that strategy has a lot of things that can go wrong, and these I specifically mentioned to Graf-san because I felt that she would think of this as some sort of challenge and try it out in an actual battle. Graf-san must be extremely well-trained in her ability to micromanage her planes. If she cannot maintain complete concentration and control each plane perfectly, then this tactic is more or less a waste. Not only that, but Graf-san would have to be extremely diligent in watching over the allies whom she is granting free escort services to with her fighters. Because the whole point of this strategy is to allow allies to fight at their own pace and defeat the enemy fleet piece by piece, Graf-san would have to react to what her friends were doing in real time out at sea, so either Graf-san herself would have to possess remarkable reflexes to keep up with her friends, or she would have to hold a debriefing meeting with her friends and discuss with them what they planned to do while on the offensive so that she has an idea what all of her friends would do and can accurately predict their next moves. On top of which, because Graf-san would be allotting the majority of her processing power and attention to covering the rest of her fleet, she herself would have to be either left alone in the rear flanks, where she may be at risk to surprise enemy flank attacks and be unable to retaliate or defend herself, or require an escort herself in the form of another ship girl, which is a problem for the German fleet due to how small their fleet is to begin with. Overall, this was not a very useful tactic: its use is very specific, its execution is extremely focus-intensive and will leave her open to possible enemy attacks, and if the enemy fleet has any semblance of a strong anti-air capability, this strategy simply will not work because it will be shut down before it even begins. For the amount of effort and planning put into it, the risk-reward ratio is sadly unforgivingly bad, but during the times when the circumstances are perfect for this kind of strategy and Graf-san is able to execute it well, it will almost guarantee the safety of her friends.

We spent nearly all of today helping Graf-san train, even holding sparring matches against her planes via simulated combat drills to help Graf-san practice her micromanagement skills as my sisters and our German friends sparred in up to four individual duels while Graf-san controlled four planes at once. The first time Graf-san tried this risky strategy, she literally had to exit out of the simulation because her processors were overheating due to how much data overflow she was unable to process quickly enough from controlling multiple planes at once, so she took it one step at a time, practicing with just a single plane while Shigure-onee-san and Bismarck-san sparred to have Graf-san get the hang of how best to escort the German battleship against her target. Once she got the hang of this, she then moved on to controlling two planes at once, in two duels, but this proved to be a little bit much at first, so she went back to drilling single-plane escorts. Eventually, she was able to make enough mental adjustments and allot an efficient amount of power to her processors that would allow her to handle the workload of controlling up to four planes at once, though she was only finally able to pull this off successfully in our last hour of training before returning home.

But before we left back for home, Kawakaze, Harusame-onee-san, and Suzukaze showed us all a very strange trick. They called it "wavedashing", and it is a trick to instantly redirect our momentum on water and perfectly maintain our speed (or preserve most of it) to increase our mobility in close-range naval combat. They said that Kawakaze was the one who found it on accident last night, and that they didn't have a chance to tell us because we were so focused on helping Graf-san train. And to everyone's surprise, we found that all of us could perform this trick, even Graf-san and Bismarck-san, who are our capital-tier ship girls.

This trick will revolutionize close-quarter naval fights with the Abyssals. This "wavedashing" trick expands our mobility options so much that I think it is now possible for a skilled destroyer to navigate her way through an entire enemy fleet without getting hit by a shell once, because this allows those of us with honed reactions and reflexes to solely rely upon them to dodge and avoid shells, rather than having to spend time making accurate predictions and reads on enemy attacks and timings. I told everyone that tomorrow, everyone was going to have to learn this wavedashing technique. I have a feeling that in our next encounter with the Abyssals, this technique will save some of our lives, if not all of ours.

I'm a little embarrassed to log this, but after a light dinner tonight, Kawakaze asked me to join her in the bath so that we could spend some time together. Her excuse was that she wanted me to teach her tricks on how to wash her hair, but in reality she wanted to talk to me about how I was doing here, if I wasn't feeling too pressured by my role and status among our German friends. I insisted that I was having lots of fun here, and that teaching and instructing our new friends was a very rewarding experience.

Kawakaze then hugged me tightly as we were sitting in the luxurious large bathtub. She confessed that she was growing sadder and sadder over the few days we have spent so far in Germany because of how much effort I was putting into helping our new friends train, and when I asked why, she said she would have much preferred seeing me perform my leadership role with a second remodel. Kawakaze said that she was starting to feel more and more like the second remodel that was given to her before our arrival to Germany was ultimately wasted on her. Sure, she got all these cool powers being able to use fire as her attacks, but she thought that I would have benefited much more with a second remodel. Now, more than ever, she really wished that I could have received it instead. I tried to convince her that I still didn't need it, but Kawakaze did not try to hide her own doubt.

"Listen, Aneki," she told me, "if you end up being the one person sinkin' in our first operation here, I'll never live that down, and if it happens, I'm gonna go find that dev who gave me my remodel and tell 'im to change me back."

I promised Kawakaze that this wouldn't happen, and even if it did, there was no reason for her to deny such a powerful strength that was unique to her. For the sake of everyone else she needs to protect, she needs to keep the blessings she's received. I gave Kawakaze a small kiss on her forehead to calm her down, and she seemed to appreciate it.

I love you, Kawakaze. I really do want you to become strong, because I think that honestly, you can do more with raw strength and pure talent and skill. Teitoku, please me help me find it in myself to keep supporting my younger sisters like this.

I love you, Teitoku.

五月雨


	30. 六月二十七日（金）

**六月二十七日（金）**

Shigure-onee-san talked to me this morning just before breakfast time about something important, and it had to do with Harusame-onee-san. Apparently, yesterday Harusame-onee-san was overtraining herself by attempting to run impossibly hard combat simulations for herself, all of which she had failed. And when Shigure-onee-san asked her why she was doing that to herself, Harusame-onee-san admitted that she was starting to feel incompetent.

I expressed my desire to speak with Harusame-onee-san for myself and learn exactly what was going through her mind to make her feel this way, but Shigure-onee-san dissuaded me from doing so. She said that she had already talked to her and calmed her down; it would not be wise for us to bring up the topic and risk reopening that wound again, and I unwillingly agreed not to mention it to Harusame-onee-san. I understand where Shigure-onee-san is coming from, but I just really want to speak with Harusame-onee-san anyway. But for the sake of listening to my older sister, I won't speak to Harusame-onee-san for now, but I will talk to her if an incident like that happens again and I happen to catch it. So far today, every time I looked over at Harusame-onee-san, she was doing fine and did not seem unlike her usual self, so I suppose today was okay for her.

Even though I'm sure I do not know everything that happened yesterday because I was so busy with helping Graf-san learn the few carrier tactics that I happened to know, I couldn't stop myself from thinking about what happened to Harusame-onee-san yesterday. Shigure-onee-san refused to give me her memory files that depict her speaking with Harusame-onee-san, perhaps wisely because she would have foreseen me being preoccupied by it all morning, but all throughout breakfast and during our way over to the training facilities, I kept thinking about Harusame-onee-san, even going so far as to sit with her in the car that we take to go train that Big-sensei drives. Why did Harusame-onee-san say that she was feeling incompetent? Even though it's not really a secret or anything that Harusame-onee-san is perhaps the least combat-inclined of us all, it wasn't like she let it bother her before. Even when we were deployed to Okinawa, Harusame-onee-san had participated in enough battles for us to know that she wasn't the best fighter among us, but even back then Harusame-onee-san was not all that bothered. She prided herself upon carrying extra supplies for everyone else because of the fact that she wasn't as combat-inclined as the rest, so her relative inability to fight as well as everyone else was displaced for the most part. And it wasn't like she was _terrible_ at fighting. Even today, when I watched her train, she was doing very well. Now, whether that is simply a matter of being corrected by Shigure-onee-san from yesterday, I may have yet to find out for certain.

But it is still so strange to me that Harusame-onee-san would let it bother her now of all times. I really wish Shigure-onee-san would have told me, but she refuses to talk about it in case I feel so tempted to speak to Harusame-onee-san about it, so I am simply left guessing. What triggered Harusame-onee-san to start feeling that way? I suppose if I go off what I mentioned earlier, about how she was able to accept the fact that she is not so good at fighting by supporting her friends and fleet in other ways, I can see how now, because Harusame-onee-san can't really have a way to help everyone else other than to train and improve her own skills so that she can be a combat asset to everyone in battle, she is forced to feel inferior to everyone else. But even then, Harusame-onee-san doesn't seem like the type of person to become so upset over something like that to drive herself into undergoing absolutely brutal combat simulations, even by Shigure-onee-san's standards. Because that would imply that Harusame-onee-san was feeling very strongly about her sense of incompetency. I can't imagine anyone who is sad who would put themselves in a virtual simulation against fifty other Abyssal enemies. In order to make yourself do that, you'd have to be very, very angry, or perhaps bitter...either way, you would need to feel an emotion that is, whatever it is, uncharacteristic for Harusame-onee-san to feel or exhibit. And that worries me greatly. Why would Harusame-onee-san feel angry about something she never really got too upset with before? Now I really feel like I should have been paying attention to everyone instead of just helping our German friends. As much as I want to do my job correctly, I don't want to neglect my sisters in the process.

Regardless, I tried my best to ignore the issue and engrossed myself with work again. Graf-san stated that she wanted to spend today focusing on her tactical research and did spend all of today working out many combat simulations to test out the strategies that she had been working on all morning, revising them and honing them as the day went on, so upon Bismarck-san's request, Shigure-onee-san, Kawakaze, and I trained with her for today. Because she wanted to train first rather than practice and learn tactics and strategy, we obliged her by helping her train her anti-destroyer and anti-cruiser skills (Abyssal destroyers are different from destroyers like us, so training against us is more akin to training against Abyssal cruisers).

Shigure-onee-san started off Bismarck-san's training by having a very intense training match against her, a simple one-on-one, so that she could see what the German battleship was good at and weak at while Kawakaze and I stood by with the rest of the German fleet (minus Graf-san of course) to observe. After about half an hour, we were able to give Bismarck-san a quick diagnostic. Shigure-onee-san was able to categorize Bismarck-san's important skills into movement skill and combat skill, and these categories had further subcategories themselves.

Bismarck-san's movement skill was where she had the most amount of flaws that we could see. Her strafing ability was markedly poor - in other words, Bismarck-san did not perform strafing maneuvers often enough, so during Shigure-onee-san's quick spar, she found herself getting hit by Shigure-onee-san's shells consistently because she was not strafing enough. Her boost movement, reactions, and reflexes were all on point, and normally in a standard fleet battle, Bismarck's movement skill in these respective areas should not give her any problems, but because it was a one-on-one, and Bismarck-san was at a disadvantage when it came down to mobility options, she frequently found herself out of boost gauge whenever Shigure-onee-san fired a round at her, causing her to end up getting hit. In addition, Bismarck-san's boost efficiency was a little lacking, partially because she was a battleship, but partially also because she tended to use a little too much boost energy with each boost-dodge that she performed. Lastly, Bismarck-san's parrying was sorely lacking, but this was only because Bismarck-san did not know that we ship girls have the option to parry incoming shells as a defensive maneuver if mobility is not one at the moment. Bismarck-san was in fact extremely surprised when she was able to parry one of Shigure-onee-san's simulated shells upon being told about it, and she felt very embarrassed that none of the German ship girls knew about this skill before.

So we, along with the German destroyers, helped Bismarck-san train her movement and her parrying. We drilled her to practice strafing in all situations: strafing left, strafing right, strafing backwards, strafing diagonally, strafing while shooting accurately, strafing while performing a bombardment salvo, strafing with her eyes closed and relying only on her radar to move accordingly in relation to the positions of her comrades nearby, strafing on one foot and maintaining balance all the while, strafing while getting hit by simulated shells so that her movement would not stop even after taking a hit, etc. We taught Bismarck-san that it is very important for battleships to constantly be on the move too, not just destroyers, because with battleships, being large and easy targets already, a full stop of movement at any time was potentially life-threatening, because if there happened to be enemies locking onto her and notice that she has come to a full stop, they will definitely capitalize on that error and punish her for it. Bismarck-san quickly recognized the value in this strafe training and got to the point where she was able to outstrafe five destroyers' worth of shells at reasonable range, and by training her strafing, she also trained herself in maximizing her boost efficiency. Now, instead of using up half her entire boost gauge just to dodge a single shell, Bismarck-san can now boost-dodge ten times that number with the same amount of boost energy, an improvement she was incredibly proud to achieve, as were the rest of us.

Parrying, however, was something Bismarck-san proved to have difficulty with today. She can parry shells aimed at her upper body just fine, because typically parries are easiest when attacks are headed in directions that are easy for the hands and arms to reach, but Bismarck-san has trouble parrying shells fired at her lower body. Shigure-onee-san taught her that the best way to parry enemy shells coming for her lower body in the pelvic or thigh region was to form fists with her hands and to parry the attacks with the backs of the fists while angling the fists so that the shells would never be approaching her hands at a perpendicular angle, and that it was always better to parry with the knuckles, most preferably the dead center of the back of the hand, rather than the wrist. At no point should she ever try to parry with the wrists, even if it might seem easier for certain parry angles, because every time she did that, she would run the risk of damaging or even breaking her wrist if she did not parry correctly. And while parrying incorrectly is always going to be costly, it would be much better if she mistimed a parry, say, on her knuckles than on her wrist, because it's possible to fight with broken knuckles; it is infinitely harder to fight with broken wrists, because that would mean all future parries attempted afterwards would have to be done with the forearms, which is much more difficult to do, and everything else that can no longer be done effectively with broken wrists.

When we returned home today, we found Mr. and Mrs. Wedekind back home, having flown in during the afternoon from London from their important meeting, and with another fresh dinner laid out before us. We even came back home early, today being Friday. We all enjoyed a piping hot dinner of German marinated chicken called "Hendl" and a soup filled with strips of German panckes called "Flädlesuppe", and of course, some more apple cider. Tonight's dinner was the best dinner I think I have ever had; it was just so filling. Everyone ate a lot, including Graf-san and Bismarck-san, who, being capital ship girls, ate several helpings of dinner by themselves. I think I am more amazed at the fact that Mr. and Mrs. Wedekind were able to make so much food for everyone. I suppose they expected this, since the German ship girls have already been living with the Wedekind family for a long time now, but it is still no less amazing to consider that Mr. and Mrs. Wedekind have been taking care of their ship girls like this for so long, without ever complaining or appearing that they do not enjoy what they do.

They really do love their fleet. And even if they are not technically their Admirals, Mr. and Mrs. Wedekind, I feel, should be seen as examples of how we ship girls should be taken proper care of.

But it makes me wonder...if you and I had enough time together, Teitoku, I wonder if we, too, one day, might be able to take care of others like that?

I guess I can only sit here and wonder, can't I.

I love you, Teitoku.

五月雨


End file.
